© John Sibley/Pool Photo via AP/TASS

Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson, who announced intention to leave office on July 7 amid the national political crisis that arose over a number of Cabinet resignations, says to be willing to redeem his position in the future. This was reported by the country’s Sunday Times newspaper referring to office sources of the still acting PM.

An interesting detail: the newspaper was issued on July 24, the day of Boris Johnson's third anniversary as prime minister when he came to replace Theresa May. He certainly wanted to celebrate the date in a different way, not as a "lame duck" to sit through the term until the new Cabinet leader is announced on September 5. The outlet reports that a number of Tory supporters who stood out for Boris Johnson’ resignation as PM have faced criticism from ordinary voters and risk a "similar retribution" by losing the next parliamentary election set for January 2025.

At the same time, aides to the resigned Prime Minister report that Johnson quits like someone having to clear off the rest of his work. According to The Sunday Times, over 7,6 thousand members of the Conservative party signed a petition urging to put Johnson on the list of PM hopefuls, along with ex-Finance Minister Rishi Sunak and former Foreign Minister Liz Truss. Just a reminder: on July 20, the latter two made it to the final round of elections within the Tory faction in the House of Commons. Given the opinion of ordinary party members, Boris Johnson apparently intends to get back to the heights of power in the United Kingdom.

In the meantime, Johnson has made things hum at 10 Downing Street. Thus, last week he visited the North Yorkshire training base of the Ukrainian military, handled training grenades, various weapons and an anti-tank launcher. The two-minute video features training activities of Ukrainian soldiers and footing of Johnson walking around in a camouflage uniform. Surrounded by British military instructors, the politician is shown to throw a training grenade, hold an NLAW anti-tank missile system and look through its sight, have hold of a mounted grenade launcher.

Notably, during his visit to Kiev in mid-June, Johnson offered Ukraine assistance in training its armed forces in the territory of European countries. The British side expects to train up to 10 thousand Ukrainian personnel every four months. Earlier, Johnson said he flew a Typhoon fighter last week, watching the air-to-air refueling process and even performing acrobatic maneuvers.

By the way, Boris Johnson plans another trip to Kiev before he finally leaves Downing Street, The Telegraph reports referring to a source. This will be Johnson's third visit to Ukraine after the ones in June and April. This time, he intends to meet with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. "He [Johnson] is feeling the burden of responsibility having been President [Zelensky’s] biggest backer. He can't just leave without making sure the world has his back," an unnamed source told the publication.

Being an ardent Russophobe, Johnson has been a great fan of the Ukrainian president, making Britain do its best to help the Kiev regime confront Russia. After Moscow launched its special military operation to protect the population of Donbass republics on February 24, the United States, Great Britain, the European Union and a number of other countries imposed quite a number of sanctions against Russia and increased arms supplies to the Ukrainian authorities. London has been and remains one of the most active actors.

For instance, Russia’s Federal Security Service says British special agencies rendered substantive support to the Ukrainian military intelligence in its recent attempt to hijack Russian military aircraft. "It is obvious that the operation itself was conducted with the support of Western special services, first and foremost the UK’s," an FSB agent told the Rossiya 24 TV channel. July 25 saw the FSB report a disrupted NATO-supervised operation by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) to hijack Russian combat aircraft. Operational warfare against the HUR revealed data that helped the Russian army destroy a number of Kiev’s military facilities.

Given London's zealous assistance to the Kiev regime, many opponents of our country believe that with Boris Johnson leaving the political scene, Britain will lose leadership in the Western anti-Russian campaign. But unfortunately, we will probably have to disappoint this part of the Western establishment: judging by the statements of Rishi Sunak and especially Liz Truss, official London will proceed with the "Johnson line" towards Russia and strongly support Zelensky. At least, Ms. Truss has stated she will use hostility to Russia in her election campaign. She does not conceal her wish to defeat Sunak by reproaching him for the lack of it in the Tory leader race, whose winner will automatically become the country’s new prime minister.

People close to Truss suggest that she decided to use foreign policy and security issues, positioning herself as a "hawk" towards Russia and China. This is what one of her allies told The Sunday Telegraph: "Liz is the one who has the experience, the credibility and the resolve when it comes to Ukraine and China, which puts her at the hawkish end of the party, while Rishi is more at the dovish end."

Liz's argument is that today we live through a more dangerous time since the Cold War, and she will help the UK retake the global lead, a Truss supporter said. He added that when banking sanctions against Russia were introduced, Rishi’s Ministry of Finance did not want to move as fast as Boris and Liz wanted. According to him, the British Treasury back-pedaled when it came to the SWIFT ban against Russian banks, because it should walk a careful line and think about figures alone, but sometimes the time comes to make tough choices.

Notably, Liz Truss is currently leading the race to become Prime Minister of Great Britain. Polls among members of the ruling Conservative Party, who will have to choose their new leader, indicate her significant superiority over Rishi Sunak. The latest YouGov survey of July 21 showed that 62% of the Tories questioned would support Truss, against the 38% who preferred Sunak.