BORIS Johnson is to liken Russia’s conflict with Ukraine to Hitler’s invasion of Europe during the Second World War in an address to MPs in Kyiv.
The Prime Minister will evoke Winston Churchill when he tells members of the Verkhovna Rada that it is their country’s “finest hour” on Tuesday.
Churchill told MPs in 1940, as Britain faced the threat of invasion by Germany, that if they could stand up to Hitler “all of Europe may be free” and said: “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire lasts for a thousand years men will still say, ‘this was their finest hour’.”
Mr Johnson is to echo this sentiment as he speaks to Ukrainian MPs, becoming the first world leader to do so since the invasion started three months ago.
He is expected to say that just as Britain considers its “finest hour” to be the strength people showed in the face of the “threat of invasion during the Second World War”, the current conflict “is Ukraine’s finest hour.”
Mr Johnson will speak to MPs via videolink from Downing Street, where he is expected to say: “When my country faced the threat of invasion during the Second World War, our parliament – like yours – continued to meet throughout the conflict, and the British people showed such unity and resolve that we remember our time of greatest peril as our finest hour.
“This is Ukraine’s finest hour, an epic chapter in your national story that will be remembered and recounted for generations to come.
“Your children and grandchildren will say that Ukrainians taught the world that the brute force of an aggressor counts for nothing against the moral force of a people determined to be free.”
He will also announce a £300m package of military aid and specialised civilian protection vehicles for the war-torn country tomorrow, on the same day as the British embassy reopens in Kyiv.
Included in the new wave of support will be electronic warfare equipment, GPS jamming gear and thousands of night vision goggles and devices for after dark conflict.
In the coming weeks, heavy lift UAV systems will be provided to give logistical support to isolated forces and more than a dozen new specialised Toyota Landcruisers will also be shipped out to help protect civilian officials in Eastern Ukraine and evacuate civilians from frontline areas, following a request from the Ukrainian government.
The additional assistance comes as the war reaches its third month, displacing millions of people from their homes and killing thousands of soldiers and civilians.
Israel, which has acted at times as a negotiator and peacekeeper in the conflict, has now been drawn deeper into the fight after Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov claimed Adolf Hitler had “Jewish blood”.
In a signal of sharply deteriorating relations with Moscow, the Israeli foreign ministry summoned the Russian ambassador and demanded an apology.
“Such lies are intended to accuse the Jews themselves of the most horrific crimes in history that were committed against them,” Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a statement.
“The use of the Holocaust of the Jewish people for political purposes must stop immediately.”
Mr Lavrov made the assertion on Italian television on Sunday when he was asked why Russia said it needed to “de-Nazify” Ukraine if the country’s own president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was Jewish.
“Well I think that Hitler also had Jewish origins, so it means nothing,” he said, speaking through an interpreter.
Dani Dayan, chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, said the Russian minister’s remarks were “an insult and a severe blow to the victims of the real Nazism”.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said the remarks were “Unforgivable and outrageous.”
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