The only place where Boris Johnson gets to play the hero

There aren’t many places in the world where former prime minister Boris Johnson can still get a hero’s welcome, but for all his cockups on the foreign policy front, he is still a firm friend of Ukraine. When war began in 2022, he established solidarity with the country and a close relationship with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He has been a continuously vocal critic of Vladimir Putin since and – regardless of whether he exploited the conflict in the final months of his premiership to distract from domestic affairs and ramping unpopularity – his reputation in that country remains that of a great international ally. But make no mistake: in his new Channel 5 documentary, Into Ukraine’s Kill Zone, Johnson does not want to be received as a statesman, but a journalist. As he joins Daily Mail war reporters and Ukrainian soldiers on a trip from Kyiv to the eastern occupied frontline, that means balaclavas and bullet-proof vests and hiding his name to avoid attention – and peril. It means high-speed charges along the country’s most dangerous and bombarded road, it means eating one of his colleagues’ Snickers bars and it means marvelling “You shot the arse off that one!” after observing the scale of a drone’s destruction. It also means decrying the West’s increasing indifference and saying it “has got to snap out of its complacency”, now that he is free of responsibility and the burden of diplomacy. Fortunately, it swerves total action-man indulgence and – surprisingly – keeps its focus on the subject and not the presenter. This, if you can stomach the exaggerated hobbling, the lopsided helmet and the other concessions to his old scruffy-haired charade, is straightforward reportage. His 72-hour journey takes him to a bomb factory developing “toe poppers” – explosives which blow off people’s legs. It takes him to a makeshift hospital and to a supermarket that stays open even as missiles rain down outside. He meets Ukrainian Orthodox priests who stay in decimated towns, young volunteers defending their villages and explores the wreckage of a bombed-out train carriage. There is his familiar bluster in describing the destruction: “This place has been pulverised” or “it’s blown to smithereens”, but that, and many Ukrainians’ obvious respect for him, is all that really distinguishes this from any other documentary or footage about Ukraine. Johnson’s solidarity clearly still means much to Ukrainians (Photo: Two Rivers Media/Soho Studios/Channel 5) It has now been nearly four and a half years since Russia’s invasion. At the time, in Britain, it was shocking – the very notion of war in Europe felt a grave threat and solidarity with its people was seldom in question. Now, as is so often the case, the fact of the conflict has become normalised by those of us fortunate to be far away from it, even though its horrors have not ceased. If there is a benefit to this documentary and the “draw” – or perhaps more accurately put, “intrigue” – of this particular post-politics project, it is that it reminds us how exhaustingly it drags on, whether through futuristic drone technology or rudimentary, medieval trench warfare. It is terrifying to consider that 30 per cent of this enormous country is estimated to be littered with mines; it is surreal to see again how everyday people adapt around the trauma – the elderly woman who shouts at Johnson’s group to get inside to avoid explosives and the man who needs help getting his knackered, broken-down car to the frontline. Anyone could deliver this message, though, and there are many far more rigorously researched and more focused reports than this. What Johnson seems to bring to the subject is his emphatic support of the Ukrainian cause and deep personal admiration for the Ukrainian people. As the years have crept on, he says, blame for this war is being equally shared “and it drives me mad”. The narrative that the need for “Ukrainians and Russians” to end it, as propagated by Trump, is preposterous. The Ukrainians have no choice. They “could lay down their weapons, but then their country would be engulfed and destroyed, their culture would be wiped out and Ukraine would be absorbed back into the Russian Empire.” It is a persuasive argument to those who wonder why the Ukrainians do not just surrender occupied areas in the name of peace. But how many of them are watching this documentary? And really, how much influence does Johnson really retain on the international stage? Ukraine may be one place he can still position himself as the wartime leader he always dreamed himself to be – a champion of the good and the just. At home, he does not command the kind of enduring respect that can change minds and change policy, and so his film’s main purpose is simply a declaration of Ukrainian solidarity. And as his film shows us, solidarity is not enough. ‘Boris Johnson: Into Ukraine’s Kill Zone’ is streaming on 5