Boris Johnson has compared Vladimir Putin to the “fat boy in Dickens” who wants to make people’s flesh creep and insisted that the Russian leader would not deliver on his threat to use nuclear weapons.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the former prime minister said that any use of nuclear weapons by Russia would leave it in “complete economic paralysis” as nations including China and India would turn against it.
He urged western allies to give Ukraine tanks to help it fight Russian forces. When Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s deputy prime minister, used an ice-hockey metaphor to call for more support, Johnson said that Putin must “get the puck out of Ukraine”.
