British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said any peace talks over Ukraine are likely to fail, as he compared holding talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiating with a "crocodile".

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Johnson said dealing with Putin was like "a crocodile when its got your leg in its jaws" and said it was vital that the West continues arming Ukraine. The PM was speaking as he headed to India, where he will encourage his counterpart Narendra Modi to end its neutrality over the war in Ukraine. He played down the likelihood that India would end its longstanding ties with Russia.

"It is very hard to see how the Ukrainians can negotiate with Putin now given his manifest lack of good faith," Johnson told reporters. "His strategy, which is evident, is to try to engulf and capture as much of Ukraine as he can and perhaps to have some sort of negotiation from a position of strength."

Johnson said world leaders, including US President Joe Biden, agreed on a call this week that they would continue to supply Ukraine with weapons, including artillery, as Russia intensified its attacks on Ukraine's East.

Ukraine and Russia have not held face-to-face peace talks since March 29, and the atmosphere has soured over Ukrainian allegations that Russian troops carried out atrocities in the town of Bucha near Kyiv. Moscow has denied the claims.

Russia seized its first town in eastern Ukraine as part of a fresh assault this week that Ukrainian officials have described as the Battle of Donbas.

India’s Neutrality

Johnson said the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had told him that he was confident of pushing Russian troops out of the eastern Donbas region, but that his forces were unlikely to recapture Crimea, which Russia seized eight years ago.

"The view of the president of Ukraine, if I understood him correctly, I speak to him a lot, is he would actually like Russian forces to be expelled from their existing positions in Donetsk and Luhansk. So that is a pretty maximalist position, but in Crimea they are not as maximalist," he said.

Putin has made it clear that he wants to take more Ukrainian territory and could launch a renewed assault on the country's capital Kyiv, Johnson said.

Johnson said when he meets Modi in New Delhi on Friday, he will encourage India to support Ukraine. But he accepted that India was likely to maintain its ties with Russia.

First Published:Apr 21, 2022 10:07 AM IST