Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton has told the UN that President Putin’s behaviour is comparable to the Nazis, in a forceful speech to mark the second anniversary of the Russian invasion.
The foreign secretary described the Russian president as a “neo-imperialist bully” as he drew a parallel between the conflict in Ukraine and the Nazi atrocities of the Second World War.
Two years after Russian troops failed in their attempt to assassinate President Zelensky and install a puppet regime in Kyiv, Ukrainian soldiers have found themselves outgunned and on the defensive.
President Biden is lobbying Republicans to approve a $60 billion package of aid amid an increasingly desperate situation on the front line.
Biden has blamed Congress for the Ukrainian defeat in the eastern town of Avdiivka this month — a significant victory that came as Putin prepares to rubber-stamp elections in March following the suspicious death of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition figure.
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Cameron has resorted to using the Nazi analogy in recent weeks as he tries to convince US members of the House of Representatives to continue arming Ukraine.
Last week Cameron compared hardline Republicans stalling on the aid package to appeasers of Nazi Germany — a criticism that prompted Marjorie Taylor Greene, a prominent supporter of Donald Trump, to say the foreign secretary should “kiss my ass”.
But in his most explicit attack yet, Cameron directly compared Putin to Adolf Hitler at the UN security council.
Speaking after the Russian ambassador to the UN falsely claimed that Putin had not started the war, Cameron mocked Russian justifications for launching the invasion and appealed to US Republicans to stop the “warmonger” from winning in Ukraine.
“We’ve heard every excuse in the book,” he said. “One minute he says it was about attacking Nazis, the next minute it was because there was a threat to Russia, then he tells us it was Nato provocation, then he says this country doesn’t really exist.
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“These excuses are nonsense. It was an invasion, pure and simple. The only people behaving like Nazis are Putin and his cronies who thought they could invade a country, take its territory and ultimately the world would look away.”
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Britain fought alongside the USSR to defeat Nazi Germany in the Second World War, a conflict that claimed the lives of 27 million Soviet citizens and carries huge emotional resonance in Russia.
Before the war, Russian and British veterans would attend remembrance services together in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk to commemorate those who perished in the Arctic Convoys, the lifeline that supplied the Soviet Union with tanks and planes during the Second World War and a symbol of the two countries’ shared battle with Nazi tyranny.
But such memories have faded as Putin has increasingly associated the Soviet Union’s sacrifices during the Second World War with the “denazification” of Ukraine.
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In Moscow on Friday Putin marked the Defender of the Fatherland Day by laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a Red Square monument dedicated to Soviet troops who died in the Second World War, and praised Russian soldiers fighting for “truth and justice” in Ukraine.
He boasted of the modernisation of Russia’s nuclear arsenal after enjoying a test flight on a Tu-160M strategic bomber. Russia is now spending 40 per cent of its annual budget on defence. “We will continue to strengthen the armed forces in every possible way, including ongoing re-equipping and modernisation efforts,” Putin said.
The UK placed new sanctions this week on the administrators of an Arctic penal colony where Navalny was killed and also announced travel bans and asset freezes on Russian companies that make components for missiles and engines for fighter jets.
The US and the EU have also issued sanctions targeting hundreds of Russian people and entities, including hitting companies based in other countries such as China and India that have supplied the Russian military.
But Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, admitted this week that western sanctions had loopholes after a report suggested that Russian arms manufacturers have circumvented British sanctions by importing technology via ex-Soviet countries including Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Uzbekistan.
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Speaking to MPs on Thursday, Shapps admitted more needed to be done to close the loopholes.
• Who is winning the war in Ukraine — and when will it end?
“When sanctions are set up, initially they tend to work, but then, rather like water flowing around a boulder in the stream, people will eventually work their way around and find another route to market,” he said. “After a period of time, sanctions become holed, and people can get around them and through them.”
An analysis by Sky News found that British exports to Kyrgyzstan had risen by 1,100 per cent. Most of the exports were heavy machinery and cars — both of which are banned from being sent to Russia.
The analysis found that most of the goods being sent to former Soviet countries were parts used in aeroplanes, helicopters or unmanned aircraft.
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Announcing that the UK would send 200 Brimstone anti-tank missiles to Kyiv as part of its latest package of support, Shapps also said that it was in the US’s interests to continue funding Ukraine or risk emboldening autocrats elsewhere.
“The reason this is in America’s interests isn’t just to come to the rescue of Europe. But it is because other despotic leaders, other autocrats, other regimes of any type, will be looking at whether we lose and give up simply because we get bored of the fight and walk away,” he said. “It is in America’s interests to step in here, otherwise they will find it more expensive in the future, perhaps in other parts of the world, to defend the world order.”
