Ben Lowry: Boris Johnson has been vindicated in holding a pro Nato line on Ukraine

But Mr Johnson has been vindicated in his approach to Ukraine.

Cynics will say he has used the crisis to divert the gaze from Partygate’, in which his apparent acquiescence in Covid rule breaches seemed set to end his premiership.

And yet while global events have unfolded in a way that seems to have boosted the Tory leader’s fortunes, his attitude to Ukraine does reflect a greater wariness of Russia in the UK and the US than in nations such as Germany.

While some German politicians have long been wary of Vladimir Putin, and some Americans such as Donald Trump have been at best confused in their approach to his autocratic rule, on the whole London and Washington have a cautious Nato world view — that great danger to the west is never far away.

When Boris Johnson travelled to Ukraine early last month he was did not have German moral support.

Berlin’s minister, Christine Lambrecht, had contradicted the UK policy of arms supplies to Ukraine, as outlined by Britain’s defence minister Ben Wallace in European capitals pre the invasion. Germany warned of “escalating” tensions.

Germany had said it would supply 5,000 military helmets to Ukraine to help defend against Putin, an offer that the mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko called “a joke”.

There was fierce criticism of Mr Johnson’s tactics back home in the UK. When Emmanuel Macron travelled to Moscow for talks with President Putin, where the French president was placed at the end of a long table from his Russian counterpart, days after Mr Johnson’s visit to Kyiv, a Guardian commentatory wrote: “The best hope remains the path to peace outlined last week by Macron during talks with Putin in Moscow. How shaming, and dangerous, that Boris Johnson’s government is so unsupportive. Brexit Britain, detached by choice from the EU and in thrall to US policy, is undermining European diplomatic efforts to defuse the crisis.”

In fact Mr Johnson and his government was vindicated in their public support for Ukraine. And President Joe Biden was vindicated in his sudden comment on February 18 that he was convinced that Russia had decided to invade — a remark that caused international alarm. Pundits had wondered if America’s commander-in-chief had, in his old age, perhaps mangled his words. But it was always more likely that he would only have said such a thing based on good US intelligence, and so it proved.

I remember President Biden’s prediction well because it came that evening as I was helping get the Saturday paper to print. We got a mention of the president’s remark on this page with a picture of him.

Mr Johnson was further vindicated when he told the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, on a later visit to Berlin, that Western “inaction” to a Russia invasion would “have unthinkable consequences”.

And yet right up until the invasion, Britain and America were being slammed for war mongering.

A letter writer to this paper on Wednesday February 23 slammed “armchair generals who always seem willing to fight to the last drop of someone else’s blood”, only to ask us on Friday not to print it in light of the fact that Russian tanks had crossed the border into Ukraine.

Now that the invasion has happened, Germany has suddenly changed its tune. There has been huge support for Chancellor Scholz’s reversal of its policy on defence spending and lethal weapons. It now plans to increase the former and export the latter.

This will be widely welcomed, but it is not unreasonable to say that the approach of Germany and France prior to invasion caused Mr Putin to think that there was no stomach in the West to confront him(as did America quitting Kabul).

No-one is blameless in this. London is one of the greatest cities in history but allowed itself to become a magnet for global mega money, much of it of dubious provenance.

It is interesting, however, to see that the sanctions against the Russian oligarchs by all major European powers, including UK, France and Germany, is causing such unease to these powerful men, who love their mansions and yachts. Do they have enough influence to persuade Russian generals to turn against President Putin, something Colonel Tim Collins on page 7 sees as a key way to avoid nuclear war?

The News Letter’s pro Nato position long predates my editorship but in my own time I have seen how key Nato work can pass barely noticed. In 2016 I reported from Devesulu in Romania when Nato opened a key missile defence facility, a development which angered Russia. There was little interest in that row back in Northern Ireland.

Many local and southern Irish politicians are anti Nato. But on that trip I quoted a Nato official expressing the hope that the Republic would one day join the alliance.

Many unionists hope so too, and that our neighbour will move beyond a world view that is apparent in the letter opposite (in the print edition, see link below), about the amount of Dail time devoted last week to attacking Israel — despite the Ukraine crisis.

I further hope that London, when its foreign policy is so obviously more closely aligned with Washington’s than is Dublin, finally and publicly steps up its rhetoric against relentless Irish criticism of the UK in America on matters ranging from the NI Protocol to the legacy of the Troubles. The latter is particularly important, given that Ireland lectures feels free to lecture the UK despite its record of extradition refusals of IRA terrorists.

These though are medium term issues. The crisis now is Ukraine, and it has led to a welcome consensus against Putin in the West.

• Ben Lowry report from Romania 2016: Russia angry at key new missile defences open

• Ben Lowry in 2016: Reagan’s Star Wars dream comes to fruition

• Letter: When all efforts should be on solidarity with Ukraine, Ireland criticises Israel