RACHEL Johnson, sister of the Prime Minister, has said that she could “live with” Ukraine being split up by Russian invaders. 

In the lead-up to the war, Vladimir Putin hinted that the specific areas his forces would target were the eastern regions of Donbas and Donetsk Oblast. However, once the invasion commenced it became clear that Putin’s ambitions spanned further west as he has tried to take control of the capital Kyiv.

Speaking on Saturday morning during her own show on LBC radio, Johnson said that she “could live” with Ukraine ceding control of the Eastern regions of Ukraine if it meant that Putin would end the ongoing war.

She said: “If Putin claims and retains Donetsk and Luhansk, the Donbas and allows Ukraine to get on with its life, I could live with that. But I don’t think Ukraine will, that’s where I think we’re going to have enormous problems and it is going to be a long and frozen war.

“Unless, of course, Turkey can broker some sort of agreement along those lines, which is the only way I see this dividing up. Putin is not going to take his tanks out of Ukraine and lose face without having something to show for it to the Russian people. To the Russian mothers who have lost tens of thousands of their sons in this pointless and criminal war.”

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Johnson's estimates of Russian deaths are contrary to those of Russia and Nato as Vladimir Putin said on Friday that more than 1300 Russian troops had died in their invasion of Ukraine. However, this number is significantly less than Nato estimates which last week put Russian troop deaths somewhere between 7000 and 15,000.

Several people took issue with her comments on social media as Labour MP Chris Bryant commented: "So @RachelSJohnson says ‘I could live with that’ about Putin seizing half of Ukraine under a partition. Is there any sense at all in which she would be ‘living with’ it? Or has she only just so much sympathy to give to Ukrainians defending their homes and families?”

While Dragons Den star Deborah Meaden said: "I live the 'I can live with that' comment from Rachel Johnson… like it affects her in any way!!"

Speaking to The National, Linda Allison, the chair of the Edinburgh branch of the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain, said: "I am appalled by Rachel Johnson's pro-Russian sentiment and that she could live with Ukraine being split up. Ukrainians are fighting for their State Sovereignty to preserve the whole of Ukraine for Ukraine. Too many innocent Ukrainians have died or had their homes completely flattened by Russian missiles.

"No mention in her statement of the hundreds of civilian Ukrainians who have already lost their lives in what all nations agree are 'war crimes' against Ukraine by Russia or the grieving mothers, wives, children of the dead Ukrainian soldiers. Unbelievable! Londongrad speaks again."