BORIS JOHNSON: Across the world, democracies and autocracies are engaged in a huge arm wrestle. If America and Britain let Putin win in Ukraine, it’ll spur on the copycat chaos-makers

In the annals of congressional madness, this week's blockade of aid to Ukraine is on a par with the efforts of some American politicians to thwart arms shipments to Britain in 1940, at a time when that country alone faced Hitler. The vote in Congress was an act of pure myopia.

It showed that we have failed to understand the essential lesson of the twentieth century: that you cannot simply ignore the actions of distant dictators. You cannot close your eyes to the death and destruction they cause, because sooner or later that chaos will be hurled upon your own shores – sometimes by boatloads, sometimes by car bomb.

It seems incredible that the US is wavering in its support for Ukraine and for freedom, when so much has already been achieved and victory is still – I think – inevitable. The Ukrainians have managed to recapture 50 percent of the territory once occupied by Putin's forces.

They have already humiliated and sunk a war machine once heralded as the second most powerful on Earth. They kept the boastful Wagner Group in such hiding that its leader panicked and revolted – forcing Putin to assassinate one of his most egregious and experienced cronies live on global television.

Ukrainian troops are now back on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River. They challenge Russia's ability to control the Black Sea. They have the enormous moral advantage of fighting for their home and hearth, while Putin's sad conscripts are fed into the meat grinder of Avdiivka without truly believing in the cause that requires them to die. That's why I'm sure that Ukraine will win in the end, because all of Putin's anger is now crashing against the rock of the Ukrainian nation.

Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi shake hands as they begin talks today

He has already lost 300,000 men in a senseless, cruel and criminal war against fellow Slavs – fellow Russians, for heaven's sake. How many more will he slaughter, on both sides? All the Ukrainians have to do is hold on and then retake the rest of their homeland. With the right equipment and support, they can do it.

How sad and unbelievable, therefore, that the counter-offensive in the south has now been halted because the Ukrainians no longer have 155-caliber grenades and do not have enough long-range ATACMS missile systems. How strange, how illogical, that the US spends $75 billion – and now decides to pull the plug. And where is the next big tranche of British support?

The Ministry of Defense proposed a further £2.6 billion in military aid in June; and unless it is approved, Britain's contribution will simply dry up next year. We are now being surpassed by the Dutch, and if Western aid continues to decline – as is currently the case – it will be a tragedy.

It is not only morally right to help Ukrainians protect themselves and ensure the freedom and independence of an innocent country. As an investment in the West's security, the Ukrainian case makes unassailable sense.

Look what the US military gets for their investment. Those Pentagon billions create jobs in the American military-industrial complex. These arms shipments have allowed the Ukrainians to degrade the military forces of one of America's largest and oldest strategic adversaries—all without putting a single pair of American boots on the ground.

So why do Republicans in Congress want to block spending on Ukraine? Because they insist on linking the bill to domestic measures: to curb immigration to the US. Why should we spend more on foreign wars, they say. Let's fix things at home!

Don't they see the irony? Do they not see the connection? The war in Ukraine is about freedom, about the rights of Ukrainians to repel the raping and murdering Russian army. After almost two years, it is now also about the West's credibility in its uprising against tyrants and autocrats around the world.

Ukrainian soldiers fire on Russian frontline positions in the eastern Donbas region

Over the past two decades, Western powers have repeatedly withdrawn, or decided not to intervene, from Syria to Ukraine, and the resulting wars have led to increased dislocation and dispersal of people – often simply fleeing the disaster zone in the hope of a better life . . Look at the tides of humanity approaching the shores of Britain and the US, causing such tensions in the politics of all Western democracies.

Where do they come from? From Africa, the Middle East, Afghanistan, from all the places we left when the Western powers decided to cede their influence to others. They come from the Sahel, where the French have caved in to Russia, and they pass through Libya, which we left in chaos in 2011, and of course they cross the Mediterranean to Europe in large numbers.

They come from Iraq, which we abandoned in 2011, and from Afghanistan, which we abandoned in 2021, and from Syria, which we abandoned in 2019. And of course they come from Ukraine, where there are tens of millions of displaced people.

The people causing the chaos are the autocrats and their proxies. It is Putin's mercenaries who have happily driven immigrants from the Sahel region. It is the Belarusian tyrant Alexander Lukashenko who has adopted a deliberate strategy to send migrants to Poland.

We should thank Iran for fueling conflict in the Middle East, whether in Yemen, Syria, Iraq or Lebanon, and it is Iran that supplies both Putin and Hamas with weapons. The North Koreans are helping Putin rebuild his depleted stock of grenades.

The autocrats of the world are creating this chaos and driving these tides of humanity because they know one big thing: those displaced people are not going to want to go live and work in an autocracy, not when they have the hope of arriving in an autocracy . Western liberal democracy, where they have freedom of religion and speech, as well as free healthcare, housing and an extremely generous welfare state.

No migrant goes to Russia, China, Iran or North Korea if there is a chance for a Western liberal democracy. Mass migration has thus become a tool through which autocrats seek to torment and disrupt democracies.

To put it bluntly, they don't care if their activities lead to mass movements of humanity – because they won't feel it themselves. If Putin wins in Ukraine, it will be yet another boost to the copycat mayhem makers around the world.

To those in America who think they can be isolated from all this: forget it. What happens if Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro attacks Guyana? Where will the refugees go?

We are now in a huge arm-wrestle between the democracies and the autocracies, and we must be strong. It is sometimes said that the US can always be trusted to do the right thing – after exhausting all available alternatives.

I am sure this will also be the case with Ukraine. Frankly, no president who wants to make America great again can start his term by letting Putin win.

We need Britain and Europe to rise to the challenge, because America cannot do it alone. Ukraine must win, not just for the sake of Ukrainians, although that is reason enough, but for the sake of peace and stability around the world.