Vladimir Putin news: Humiliation as 56th Russian colonel killed – but Putin retaliates with attack on packed mall

PM insists cost of Ukraine support is ‘a price worth paying’ (2/2)

The Prime Minister told the BBC at the summit in the Bavarian Alps: “I think that the economic impacts on the UK will start to abate, we’ll find ways around things and some of the cost pressures will start to come down.

“But just in terms of staying the course, imagine if you didn’t. Imagine if we allowed Putin to get away with the violent acquisition of huge chunks of another country, a sovereign, independent territory – the lessons for that would be absolutely chilling in all of the countries of the former Soviet Union, you can see what’s happening in the Baltic countries already.

“But the read across would also be felt in east Asia, as well.

“So, in terms of the economic effects of that, that would mean long-term instability, it would mean anxiety across the world.”

Comparing the situation to the defeat of Nazi Germany, Mr Johnson declined to put a limit on UK support.

“The point I would make to people is, I think that sometimes the price of freedom is worth paying.

“And just remember, it took the democracies, in the middle of the last century, a long time to recognise that they had to resist tyranny and aggression.

“It took them a long time, it was very expensive.

“But what it bought in the end, with the defeat of the of the dictators, particularly of Nazi Germany, it bought decades and decades of stability, a world order that relied on a rules-based international system.

“And that is worth protecting, that is worth defending, that delivers long-term prosperity.”