Backing Kiev pushed Russia and China into an alliance, Dominic Cummings has said.
The UK and its allies found themselves supporting a “corrupt mafia state” in Ukraine and getting into a war of attrition against a partnership between Moscow and Beijing, according to comments made by Dominic Cummings in an interview.
Cummings, a longtime Tory political strategist who led the Vote Leave campaign for Brexit and was one of the key aides to then-PM Boris Johnson until resigning in November 2020, said in an interview published on Wednesday that “We should have never got into the whole stupid situation” regarding London’s full-throated support for Kiev. He also described Ukraine as a “corrupt sh*thole that doesn’t matter at all.”
“This is not a replay of 1940 with the pumpkin [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky as the Churchillian underdog,” he added. “This whole Ukrainian corrupt mafia state has basically conned us all and we’re all going to get f**ked as a consequence.”
Western sanctions have been “more of a disaster” for the EU than for Russia, driving up the cost of living while pushing Moscow and Beijing closer together, according to Cummings. All the West managed to do is get into a war of attrition with Russia, “who we pushed into an alliance with the world’s biggest manufacturing power.”
Cummings also addressed the argument that Russian President Vladimir Putin needed to be “taught a lesson” about invading neighbors.
“The lesson we’ve taught Putin is that we’re a bunch of total f**king jokers,” he said. “I mean, Putin already knew that before the war. But this has emphasized it and broadcast it to the entire world, what a bunch of clowns we are,” he added.
Between the sanctions regime and the US trying to seize frozen Russian assets, the West is encouraging the emergence of alternative global financial systems, he explained.
That’s not teaching Putin any lesson, only that we’re idiots.
Cummings slammed former PM Boris Johnson – with whom he is no longer on speaking terms – for using the Ukraine conflict for “acting out his Churchillian fantasies,” as well as the Parliament that “swallowed all of his total bullsh*t on Ukraine and actually took it seriously.”
Johnson was the key figure in getting Kiev to reject a peace deal with Russia in April 2022, to the top Ukrainian negotiator, as well as .
The former PM his role in scuttling the talks, calling the account “total nonsense and Russian propaganda.” However, he confirmed that he told Zelensky the UK would back him “a thousand percent” and that any deal with Moscow would be bad.