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UK should spend 3% of GDP on defence and could send up to 10,000 troops to Ukraine, Boris Johnson tells LBC
25 February 2025, 07:02 | Updated: 25 February 2025, 07:25
Boris Johnson has told LBC that the UK should commit to spending 3% of GDP on defence and commit up to 10,000 troops to Ukraine to lead a "deterrent force" in the country, ahead of Keir Starmer’s trip to Washington.
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Increasing the UK’s spending on defence would lead to economic growth and more jobs, the former Prime Minister told LBC's Nick Ferrari at Breakfast.
It comes after reports that Starmer would overrule chancellor Rachel Reeves and increase military spending in a bid to woo Donald Trump before he flies out to Washington D.C. this week, though this has not happened yet.
Boris Johnson has now said the UK should “get there now and we need to commit to [spending] 3%” of GDP on defence, claiming the increase will benefit the UK economy.
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He told Nick Ferrari: “For listeners who are worried about us spending all this money on defence right now … there's ways and ways of doing this, borrowing it, whatever.
“However we choose to spend this money, this can lead to jobs and growth in the uk. We're very, very good at producing some of these technologies that the Ukrainians need, whether it's drones or munitions or whatever.
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“And it will drive employment, it will drive long term growth in Lancashire, in Bristol, around the country. And we should think of it that way.”
The former PM also said the UK should lead a ‘deterrent force’ in Ukraine by sending up to 10,000 troops to the country, something he said the US would be expecting from Europe.
It comes after Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was ready and willing to put British boots on the ground as part of a peacekeeping force, a plan met with some opposition from European leaders.
Mr Johnson said: “The Europeans will be expected by the Americans to provide a deterrent force in Ukraine and the Americans will not put boots on the ground.
“So we've got to lead it, I think between 5,000 and 10,000 probably we could do from the, from the UK obviously, it depends how long the commitment would be for, how they would be rotated and so forth.”
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He added that this “would be a future deterrent force to offer logistical support, training, everything that is needed to back up the Ukrainians in the context of a ceasefire and a deal.”
While the Russians initially rejected Starmer’s plan to send a peacekeeping force as “completely unacceptable”, Donald Trump said on Monday that Putin would be open to such a plan.
The relationship between the US and Europe has become increasingly fragile after Donald Trump began negotiating with Russian president Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine, excluding Kyiv from the talks.
The US president also blamed Ukraine for the war and criticised the country's leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for complaining that Kyiv has been excluded from negotiations about its own future.
Trump made remarks implying that Ukraine "should have never started it" and criticized Zelensky's wartime leadership, calling him a "dictator" and accusing him of failing to hold elections due to martial law, which is prohibited under Ukraine's constitution during wartime.
Johnson has called Trump’s comments on Zelenskyy “flat out lies” and “incredibly painful for people who love Ukraine”.
However, Johnson said if you look at the text of an agreement on the table between Ukraine and the USA it was "very promising"
“That deal with America with Donald Trump is actually now, I think, much, much better than it was,” he told Nick.
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“And it contains some very good commitments by the United States. I mean, I've obviously seen some drafts, I've seen the latest one today. It contains some very good commitments by the US to the freedom, sovereignty and security of Ukraine,” he added.
“It commits the US to long term investment in Ukraine. It commits the fund that the Ukraine and the US will set up to long term investment in the security of Ukraine. There's good stuff in it.”
