Kemi Badenoch tore into Donald Trump’s efforts to secure peace in Ukraine, warning the US president’s plan would simply ‘reward’ Vladimir Putin for his bloody invasion.
In a hard-hitting foreign policy speech the Tory leader warned that the era of ‘Pax Americana’ – world peace underwritten by the US – was ‘evolving, potentially even ending’.
She criticised the president for calling Ukraine’s president Zelensky a ‘dictator’, saying Putin was a dictator.
And she said that it was ‘absolutely critical’ Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s visit to the White House later this week succeed in moving Trump away from aligning with the Kremlin.
Speaking at the Policy Exchange think tank, she said: ‘An end to the war is being negotiated while a fifth of Ukrainian territory is under enemy occupation.
‘The danger is that aggression does not merely go unpunished, but ends up rewarded.
‘Russia and other authoritarian regimes will be emboldened, if that is how this war ends.’
She said that plans to up defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2030, as set out by the last Tory government, were no longer ambitious enough.