Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson and a number of his colleagues have been banned from Russia for “deliberately aggravating the situation around Ukraine”.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Mr Johnson said Putin had chosen a "path of bloodshed and destruction" and announced sanctions against a number of Russian oligarchs.
Even before war broke out, the British Government had been supplying Kyiv with thousands of anti-tanks missiles (NLAWs) that Ukrainians have said are particularly effective at destroying Russian tanks.
Ukrainian troops and tanks in eastern Ukraine. Picture by: Tommy Trenchard / Alamy Stock Photo“Thank you to Great Britain for giving us the NLAWS – anything that can help us to defend our country is very well-received,” one Ukrainian soldier told the Daily Mail.
“These missiles have changed the war for us. It means we can fight the Russians and it doesn't matter how many of them there are now that we have a way of stopping their armour.”
The Kremlin has also accused Mr Johnson of being, “the most active participant in the race to be anti-Russian," while Alexander Lukashenko, the President of Belarus and a key ally of Putin, has claimed that murdered civilians in the Ukrainian city of Bucha were killed by a “special operation… carried out by the British.”
Now Moscow has decided to to bar the following politicians from entering the Russian Federation:
- Prime Minister Boris Johnson
- Foreign Secretary Liz Truss
- Defence Secretary Ben Wallace
- Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor, and Secretary of State for Justice Dominic Raab
- Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps
- Home Secretary Priti Patel
- The Chancellor Rishi Sunak
- Minister of Entrepreneurship, Energy and Industrial Strategy Kwasi Kwarteng
- Minister of Digitalisation, Culture, Media and Sport Nadine Dorries
- Minister for the Armed Forces James Heappey
- First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon
- Attorney General for England and Wales and advocate general for Northern Ireland Suella Braverman
- Conservative MP and former British Prime Minister Theresa May
Mr Johnson joins US President Joe Biden on a select list of world leaders banned from entering Russia.
Main image: Boris Johnson during his time as Mayor of London.
