Brexit helped prevent Putin's invasion of Ukraine, says Jacob Rees-Mogg

Brexit helped prevent the success of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, says Jacob-Rees Mogg.

< p>Former minister Brexit suggested that there would be a «dirty compromise» with the Russian leader, whose war has been thwarted by the scale of Ukrainian resistance, if British foreign policy continued to be aligned with Brussels.

Mr Rees-Mogg cited the principle of «sincere co-operation», which means that the EU and its member states must «help each other with full mutual respect» in carrying out the tasks arising from its treaties.

Asked by Sky's Sophie Ridge what he sees as the benefits of Brexit, Mr Rees-Mogg said: «We saved £191bn by not being in the EU for his Covid recovery fund. This would be our share of the EU recovery fund. 191 billion, that's one thing.»

Johnson's leadership helped stop Putin

«What else — we have a free trade agreement with Australia that will be much better than predicted. [And] we were able to show global leadership over Ukraine.

“Putin would probably have successfully invaded Ukraine if Britain had been bound by the demand for sincere cooperation and had to follow the Franco-German line in relations with Russia, which we did in 2014.

“And if I thought it wasn’t, we would have been bound by this concept of sincere cooperation, we would have had a messy compromise made in 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea. But I think it's really important.»

Mr Johnson oversaw some £3.8bn of military and economic support for Ukraine between the Russian invasion in February 2022 and his withdrawal from Downing Street seven months later.

He enjoyed high support among Ukrainians and made a number of visits to the war-torn country, establishing a close relationship with Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine.

Rishi's support

Mr. Zelenskiy praised the former prime minister for supporting his country «from the first day of Russian terror» and defending Western military aid in front of many other European leaders.

Elsewhere in his interview on Sunday morning, Mr. Rees -Mogg said it «of course» was a mistake on the part of Conservative MPs to oust Mr. Johnson last summer after a series of scandals.

However, he added, “Now it would be an even bigger mistake to get rid of Rishi Sunak. The Conservative Party cannot keep changing leaders. We have to support the leader we have.

“I support Rishi Sunak, let me be clear. The Tory Party will be fried if we change leaders again and we need to support the leader we have. But that doesn't mean we agree with him on everything.»

Mr Rees-Mogg, who left the cabinet when Mr Sunak took office in October, was among the speakers at a conference hosted by Conservative Democratic Party. Organization on Saturday.

The pressure group was set up by frustrated supporters of Mr. Johnson after he and then Liz Truss were ousted from No. 10 despite being elected members of the party. A number of its key figures have publicly called for the return of Mr. Johnson.

“The people who messed things up were MPs, not members of our party,” Mr. Rees-Mogg told the conference.

He called Mr. Johnson «the most successful campaign asset» of the Tories, adding that he was «expelled from membership without your permission.»