Former British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson sits down with One Decision’s Julia Macfarlane and former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove for his first ever podcast interview. Johnson discusses the state of the Ukraine war— his thoughts on Wagner group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin's failed mutiny and details from his recent conversation with former President Donald Trump about supporting Ukraine in defeating Russia. He also talks about his post-Brexit frustrations, if he would change how he handled the pandemic, and what's the one decision he regrets during his time in office.

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You're listening to 1 Decision, the podcast that looks at the choices made that shape our world.

I'm your host, Julia McFarlane, and I'm joined by my co-host Sir Richard Dearlove, the former chief of Britain's MI6.

The former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's decision to back Ukraine and back Ukraine all the way was 1 of the most defining aspects of his 3 years in office.

But as popular as he has been in Kiev, he is a far more controversial character back home in the United Kingdom.

We sat down with the former Prime Minister, the Brexiteer-in-Chief, a man who nearly lost a raging battle against a serious infection of Covid, and we asked him about the choices he made in foreign policy.

1 of the first things I wanted to ask you was you were recently overseas in the United States.

And 1 of my reasons for going to the United States is because clearly American Politics is getting into that pre-election period of ferment.

And I'm very concerned just to get over the message that whatever people may be hearing, whatever people may be thinking, the war in Ukraine is immensely important.

And I just think it's very important if you have a chance to talk to people like Donald Trump, just to get that over because I know in my heart the Ukrainians are going to win.

And I know that America has played a crucial role in making sure that is the right outcome.

I think it's important to remind somebody like Donald Trump, you know, he actually

Richard, don't forget who sent the first javelins.

it's also Donald Trump who withheld military aid to Ukraine.

Who sent the first javelins before we sent the N-laws, actually enabling us in the UK in a way to make that vital contribution.

You know, it was a very free-flowing, energetic conversation of the kind you'd expect.

And what I found actually with the Republican Party in the United States is that, of course they're anxious about the expense and that's the role of Congress.

Sure, but is his position more nuanced than it has been in public?

Is he more nuanced than he has been in public?

But my view is that whatever happens in the race for the White House next year, I think that America will be steadfast.

And I think that the big geopolitical reasons for continued American support for Ukraine will be overwhelming for whoever's there.

But even DeSantis has really made the Ukrainians anxious by saying this is a territorial dispute.

Well, which is why, look, and of course, there is an element in the Republican Party, in the grassroots, that kind of are isolationist.

How long did it take before the great republic of the United States of America came to support us in the Second World War?

And it wasn't until they were, America was directly attacked at Pearl Harbor, that things changed.

So actually, I think you could argue what Joe Biden has done has been outstanding.

I mean, you know, I think the commitment in dollars, a commitment in materiel, in weapons equipment, amazing.

Now, it's all come, it's coming too slowly.

The lesson we're learning in Ukraine is that we're kind of always having the argument about the thing we should have done 6 months ago.

I mean, we talked about tanks 6 months before we ended up doing it.

We're now talking about the fast jets, about F-16s.

I think that it's inevitable that we'll be giving the Ukrainians air cover as well.

And I just think that the reason I'm optimistic about the United States is that I think that the potential gains for the world are so enormous and the gains for American leadership are so enormous.

Talk to us about that phone call with Vladimir Putin where he threatened you with a missile attack.

Why I mean, you didn't speak out about that at the time.

How come you only revealed that recently?

He was just sort of saying what it's always in his interests in this conversation to try to to reframe what he's done which was a barbaric invasion of a an innocent neighbor as a confrontation between a nuclear armed NATO and a nuclear armed Russia.

And so he, so in any, so in that conversation, he was trying to, to switch the focus to UK Russia nuclear standoff.

No, he was trying to draw everybody down the rabbit hole of the nuclear argument.

No, because I think it's very important that we don't get sucked into that logic.

This is not about a standoff between nuclear armed entities, Russia, NATO, let alone UK, Russia.

It's about a Russian invasion of an independent country and the brutality that they are enacting against the Ukrainians.

And it's about us helping the Ukrainians to defend themselves with conventional weaponry, which is morally unimpeachable.

What we're doing is morally unimpeachable, completely the right thing and of course, you know, he's like the fat boy in Dickens.

He wants to make your flesh creep He wants to, he wants to spook everybody with talk of nuclear weapons.

And so everybody runs around Oh, nuclear weapon.

You never met him when he went to Moscow as foreign secretary.

With Lavrov, we had a very long lunch where he put me in front of a fire.

It was already infernally hot in this room.

It was like he was testing my resolve, and then plied us with more and more vodka.

the name for the Russian system of trying to talk to your guests with hot fire behind them and vodka in front of them?

So Putin, I've only, I've only, I think any long conversation I had with Putin, apart from on the phone, was 1 time in Berlin.

But can you believe when Putin came to power?

I mean I was with Tony Blair when we first met him in Moscow thinking that This guy maybe we could do business with we started with a started with an open mind Well, it must have been after 9-eleven.

you see well if you think If you think back to the mid 90s, you think back to, you know, there was a period when Bill Clinton in, I think, 96 makes that famous speech when he says, isn't it time that we reached out to Russia?

Russia is a great European country and civilization.

We've got to look back at that era and say it was a someone got it wrong.

You know, we didn't we really muffed it with Russia.

There was a moment when I think things could have gone differently.

Well, I became something of a message carrier between the Russians and Washington going backwards and forwards in that period and Condi Rice actually said to me at 1 point well Richard They knew because they Complained about the way that they were being treated and her reply was well, they have a GDP which is smaller than Denmark Why should we treat them as equals but clearly there was an opportunity when we could have treated them differently I tend to agree with

I think there was and I think that what happened was that they then got progressively more disillusioned and they thought that we were basically against them.

And then I think what really happened was that after the Iraq disaster, I think what happened was we lost our mojo right after Iraq.

We thought we stuffed up we got rid of Saddam We didn't have a plan then Russia got more and more assertive.

Yeah, and so in 2011 Assad gets away with the 2013.

Sorry Assad gets away with the The chemical weapons thing the 2014 Putin does the invasion of Crimea?

That's almost 10 years ago now ever since then We've we've lost our kind of willingness to stand up to Russia.

so you say Ukraine is the what I'm trying to say is Ukraine is now the turning point.

This is the this is the climactic we have.

We either show that we mean it about democracy and freedom, or we don't.

We But we are now reacting to the invasion.

Back when you were prime minister, when there was all of that coverage of the buildup of troops on the border, what was the, you know, I'm not asking for exactly what was the intelligence picture back then how worried were you it was a mixed game

well, it's very interesting because the intelligence was unbelievably grim and the opinion of the the defense intelligence people who are brilliant, I mean, absolutely brilliant people, as Richard will know, but they said that Kiev was going to be taken in a week, less.

And so the discussions we were having were not about helping Zelensky to win, they were about what we could do after the fall of Kiev to help the resistance.

That was, I'm having a long conversation about, you know, when the Ukrainians have melted into the Mackey as it were when they're they're forming their resistance, what is the UK going to do?

So in like October and November when it was like, oh, 100, 000 troops gathering on on the border, There are field hospitals been set up.

What was going on was we were already pricing in a Ukrainian defeat.

Well, OK, so that was the advice from you asked what the advice was from the security services.

What we were also doing from the summer of 21 onwards was trying to get them kit.

And if you remember, Putin's essay comes out in July, I think, or something like that.

He's, he's crazy, sort of 5000 word Nostradamus style.

Wikipedia, gone wrong kind of meditation on the meaning of, it's total bollocks, the whole thing.

But we read that and we thought this is something very, very spooky and alarming now happening.

And so Ben Wallace comes to me and says we've got to help these people and he was very brave and very right very early on Ben and We started a campaign from the late summer to to get the men or to get them what weaponry we could.

And I got to tell you, and this is no secret, it was not easy to get that through Whitehall because of the escalation issue.

And everybody said, oh, no, very, very interesting idea.

Send the Ukrainians shoulder launched anti-tank missiles.

But the trouble is that will simply provoke Putin.

you're saying Whitehall is to blame for us not-

I'm saying there was a hesitation about doing anything that would lead to quote-unquote Escalation and that has been a feature of our handling of the conflict Throughout and I think it's been totally misplaced.

The only person who really fears escalation is is Putin And so while this was going on in the back end of 21, and while the buildup was happening, I was constantly writing at the bottom of submissions 2 or 3 times, come on, we got to do this.

And finally we got them the kit in I think January

It turned out basically in the nick of time those N-laws.

And together with the Javelins, I think they really did make a difference.

I think if you look at what happened in that battle for the suburbs of Kiev, I think the anti-tank weaponry was very important

Where do you feel that we are left after the extraordinary?

Partial mutiny Which I mean I think I think he panicked in terms of his announcement on television.

I'd love to hear what you think, Richard.

My view is that Putin has inevitably been made to look weaker, less authoritative.

Prigozhin, if he was anything, was meant to be the mailed fist, the rottweiler, the licensed, bashy bazooka of Putin, wasn't he?

He was his genocery, his mercenary weapon.

And he clearly proved not to be controllable.

And I think it's the shock of seeing the great tyrant actually unable to control 1 of his most important pieces on the chessboard.

That I think has spooked a lot of people around the world who've been inclined to give Putin too much of the benefit of the doubt.

I think whether in the short term it will make any real difference to the Ukrainians ability to smash through in In the in the south of the country.

I and kick them out of the the Russians out of the land bridge, I'm not sure.

But it's certainly been bad for Putin, it's been bad for Russian morale, and therefore good for Ukraine.

That's probably about the most I can say about it.

But Richard, you had a question on Brexit for Mr.

Because I'm an ideological Brexiteer for reasons that we could discuss separately outside the meeting.

But I'm really disappointed as to where the government have got us to now and I just feel that the failure to grasp the opportunities that Brexit provided or the slowness.

A lot of us feel a great sense of frustration and a great sense that we should be doing more and faster.

But let me just give you this, okay, before you panic, before you panic, Number 1, number 1, have you been vaccinated against COVID?

Which country had the fastest vaccine rollout anywhere in Europe?

But we could have done that still in the EU?

It's not true because we were out of the vaccine procurement programme, the EU's vaccine procurement programme, and we were out of the EMA.

And if you look at the figures, it's clear that we, by I think March

we had vaccinated about 45% of our population compared to

And that made a material difference to our economic prospects, to our ability to come out of the pandemic fast.

Number 2, we've just talked a lot about Ukraine.

And it's been the single most important foreign policy choice that the UK government has faced for a long time.

How to handle the invasion by Vladimir Putin.

I really put it to you, if we had been in the EU during those crucial months that you've just described, Julia, that period from the autumn leading up to the final invasion on February the 24th,

It would have been a priority to stick to the Normandy format, to the Minsk process, which since 2014, have been controlled exclusively by France and Germany.

They're the people in the EU foreign policy to which We were committed by treaty to support that have responsibility for handling Ukraine.

I really don't think the UK would have been in a position to do things as differently and as dynamically as we did.

Number 3, the deal with the Australians and the Americans over, I'm just talking about...

There's no way we could have done that within the EU because under our duty of sincere cooperation with our friends and partners, I'm afraid we would have been obliged to tell the French that we were party to this terrible information that the Australians were about.

I was a primary critic of European defence policy.

I know that it's frustrating to see how slow it all is.

And on things like genomic editing, on where there's a crazy European Court of Justice ruling against doing it.

Well, we're going ahead and doing it anyway.

You've got some European countries like the Italians who are saying they actually want to ban it.

And so what will happen is that the commission will eventually produce a, and you've got all these AI gurus saying it's the end of the world.

But the commission will, as it always does, produce a directive that somehow tries to find a middle way between the member states and we'll do something different and better.

And so whether it's financial services, bioscience, you will find the UK increasingly doing stuff differently and it will be to the advantage of this country.

If in an ideal world, after we came out, we would have done something big and different, like taking down our corporation tax to below Irish levels or something, just to show this was Brexit Britain.

We're going to have a completely different approach to the world.

I mean, the great thing about Brexit is that it gives us back our democratic freedom.

And it gives us back our ability to decide what we're going to do.

And some governments will get things right.

But in the end, we will start to do things.

I think we already are doing a lot of things.

So you're not too worried about the remainder pushback?

But I mean, you know, I don't believe it is going to be reversed.

I think that the struggle to reverse it would be very, very great now.

And we sign things like the CPTPP, which are pretty much a reverse.

If you sign the CPTPP, and if we do a free trade deal, as we should with the United States, which should be our biggest priority.

If you do a free trade deal with the United States and the CPTPP, it starts to become very, very difficult.

Richard, I thought that was a really, really interesting conversation with Boris Johnson.

He is obviously very proud of the fact that he's been very vindicated with the stance that he's taken on Ukraine.

He has been 1 of President Zelensky's most bullish defenders, 1 of the loudest voices pushing for arming Ukraine for the West to step up its response to the Russian reinvasion that took place last February.

It was interesting because he just come back from the United States and interesting that he managed to get some face time with President Donald Trump, who has a bit on his hands with the investigations and the hot water that he's in over the classified document scandal that he's currently embroiled in.

He didn't quite say that he managed to get the message across to Trump about Ukraine, but it sounds like they discussed it and he seemed to hint that he was confident that no matter which administration was coming in in 2024 that the Ukrainians could still count on American support.

And of course, the Ukrainians are incredibly nervous about a Trump re-election, given what Trump said publicly, and also the sort of comments that DeSantis has made.

So on 2 counts they certainly have their concerns.

The condition that Boris expressed on behalf of the Republicans was the cost of supporting Ukraine.

He didn't sort of deviate from the principle of supporting Ukraine.

But then again, I think you have to remember that Boris does see the world through an optimistic angle.

I mean, he sees it from an optimistic angle.

But I was quite encouraged by what he said.

I mean, it was clear he had had a straight conversation with Trump about it.

And he did remind us that Trump had stepped up to the block early in supporting Ukraine with the Javelin anti-tank weapons.

And that his track record in supporting Zelensky was also pretty impressive, although obviously Boris wins the prize.

I think it's important to remember, and I mean I encountered this when I was in Kiev, I mean Boris is regarded as an absolute hero by the Ukrainians and in some respects I'm quite surprised he hasn't become a sort of raving ambassador for them because I think that possibility at 1 time was open Maybe the Ukrainians were worried he might be just a bit too charismatic for them and a bit too difficult to control.

Well, I wonder if it's because he's probably more popular with the Ukrainian government than he is with the British government right now.

Yeah, well, I think that's absolutely true.

I think he's seen as a charismatic leader by the Ukrainians.

And I think it's interesting what he said about the reluctance of White Hall to lend military support to the Ukrainians in the early stages when there was a build-up you know to the invasion and he clearly told us that there were lots of White Hall officials putting the brake on because they feared escalation and their argument as he expressed it to us was that it would make the situation worse.

Yeah, I mean, we did press him to say, you know, was he blaming Whitehall for hampering military aid to Ukraine?

And he said, no, Whitehall did not stop Britain arming Ukraine.

And what was interesting was he thinks that the N laws and the javelins that were sent to Kiev ahead of the 24th of February, they played a vital role of ensuring that Kiev did not actually fall.

And I thought it was very interesting when we got him to say that in the months before the invasion, the intelligence picture that he got from the British security services was kind of painting the picture of what the UK's position should be when Keeve falls within a week or whatever it was?

And how can the UK support what would have been an opposition insurgency against a kind of Yanukovych style pro-Russian new administration installed in Kiev?

Yeah, well, I think it's quite clear that pretty much everybody assumed that the Russians would drive down the road to Kiev in a relatively short period of time and that the resistance would be minimal.

I think It's clear from, well I think it's clear anyway, but it's clear from what Boris said that the US-UK prediction of the invasion was correct, although I think we now know that some of the European services didn't think the Russians would invade, They would do everything except invade.

But I think what the Americans and the British didn't predict was the effectiveness of Ukrainian resistance.

That was a huge surprise to everybody, including Boris.

And as he said, the submissions he was seeing about Ukraine all related to the aftermath of a successful Russian invasion.

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Boris Johnson's First Ever Podcast Interview