BORIS JOHNSON: Trump WILL hit Putin with every shot in his locker

So now we know. Frankly, I could have told you months if not years ago that this would be the answer – but at least we now have it from the mouth of the Russian tyrant himself.

No, folks, Vladimir Putin is not interested in peace. He doesn't want to stop the slaughter in Ukraine – or at least, he doesn't want to stop until he has won. He wants to keep bombing and killing.

He wants to keep murdering and maiming innocent Ukrainian civilians – like the kids he bombed last night in Kharkiv – until he has achieved his objectives. Those war aims remain unchanged.

He wants to destroy Ukraine as an independent country. He wants to turn Kyiv into a satellite of Moscow. He wants to rebuild the Soviet empire, defeat Nato and humiliate the West.

Above all he wants to turn the United States of America into a laughing stock, and undermine American hegemony. I can understand why the White House was last night claiming the talks between Putin and Steve Witkoff, Trump's envoy, were 'positive' and 'productive' (even though Putin kept Witkoff waiting for eight hours).

But the facts speak for themselves.

Unlike the Ukrainians, Putin has not agreed an unconditional ceasefire. He has not stopped his vicious attacks. It is obvious that he doesn't want peace – because the conditions that he is setting for that peace are not just ludicrous, but reeking of positive contempt.

After weeks of anguished negotiations, the Ukrainians and the US have put forward a joint plan to stop the carnage. Think what the Ukrainians have accepted – just to get to this point.

Think of the baloney they have endured from their American partners in the hope of coaxing the Russians to the table. They have been forced to listen to a complete mangling of historical reality – the assertion that Ukraine was somehow responsible for 'starting' the war.

I can't think of any war in recent memory that has been so unnecessary, and where responsibility has so blatantly belonged to one side rather than another. Putin chose this war. He is to blame, and he alone.

And yet the Ukrainians have watched the US undergo an apparent moral lobotomy and temporarily refuse to condemn Russian aggression.

Ukrainians have seen their brave soldiers suddenly deprived – by Washington – of crucial battlefield information, with immediate consequences for their ability to fight. Imagine what it has been like in the past ten days to be in those Ukrainian trenches, seeing your instruments go dark, knowing that you are more vulnerable – watching your friends get killed and injured, because your most important ally, the United States, has decided to pull the plug.

Is it any wonder that the Ukrainians have been under such pressure in Kursk? It makes one weep. Many Ukrainians are so furious that they want to fight on – regardless of America.

The Zelensky government has had the wisdom and bravery to compromise – and their concessions have been enormous. They have accepted that Nato membership is off the table for now, in the sense that the US will no longer be pushing for it – even if it was the US, under George W. Bush, that began the campaign for Ukraine to join in 2008.

Most painfully of all, they have accepted – for the sake of peace – that they must allow Putin at least temporarily to hang on to some of the Ukrainian land he has conquered. That is a momentous and dreadful thing for any leader to have to say to his country – that a foreign aggressor has been able to take and keep land, with temporary impunity. But that is what Zelensky has done, for the sake of peace.

What has Putin offered, by way of comparable statesmanship? What compromises is he prepared to make? Zero.

On the contrary, he is actually demanding that the Ukrainians hand over even more territory – big chunks of land that he has not been able to occupy. He wants militarily to emasculate Ukraine, which currently has the largest land forces in Europe, and cut the Ukrainian army to below 85,000.

He wants the Ukrainians to agree to neutrality; that is, to abandon any hope of eventual Nato membership. He wants effectively to run Ukraine's security arrangements, and among other things to forbid the deployment of any European reassurance force on Ukrainian soil.

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BORIS JOHNSON: Trump's peace plan is now becoming clear. Next step: A brutal squeeze on Putin

Most insultingly of all, he wants Ukraine to recognise his constitutional right to the land he has taken. After three years of violence against Ukrainians, he wants them meekly to accept that their boundaries have indeed been changed by force. No Ukrainian leader can conceivably agree to these terms, and nor can Donald Trump.

Apart from anything else, Putin's demands are in flagrant contradiction of the minerals agreement Trump has just done with Zelensky, which has at its heart a vision of a free, sovereign and secure Ukraine. We have therefore come to the moment of truth – because this is binary.

I know that in his heart Donald Trump truly wants a sovereign Ukraine; Putin wants a slave state. There is simply no way of reconciling these positions.

There are no blandishments that Putin will accept. We can offer him a return to the G7, tickets to the Super Bowl, membership of White's – none of it will work.

He will remain locked on to his objective, the subjugation of Ukraine, until he is forced – like Zelensky – to compromise. Putin will only join Zelensky in calling for peace when Trump lights a fire beneath him so crackling hot that the Russian leader has no choice.

Trump knows that he has the military and economic power to do it. He can arm the Ukrainians to the teeth, as he has promised to do in these circumstances. He can slam secondary sanctions on anyone buying Russian hydrocarbons.

He can push down the oil price, he can take Putin's frozen assets, and he knows that Putin's position – economically, politically, militarily – is far weaker than many suppose.

Will he do it? Will Trump have the guts to really put the squeeze on Putin? I believe he will; and one of the reasons I was always more positive than many about a Trump presidency is that I believe he has the right toughness and negotiating aggression to pull it off.

It is not as though he lacks boldness when it comes to economic warfare. He is being positively beastly to the poor Canadians, long-term allies of the US and more or less blameless. He is threatening punitive economic sanctions – 200 per cent tariffs – on French champagne, for reasons that are not entirely clear.

How utterly crazy it would be if Trump now failed to hit Putin with every shot in his locker, when Putin is flagrantly thumbing his nose at the White House, and continuing his cruel and unnecessary war. How bonkers to clobber America's friends – and let Putin continue literally to get away with murder.

I trust and believe Trump will hit Putin hard, and take further steps to protect a free Ukraine, because he knows in the end he can't betray the legacy of Ronald Reagan. He can't allow a new Iron Curtain to descend on eastern Europe, and a new Russian 'sphere of influence'.

He knows that would mean a general global puncturing of confidence in America – with especially disastrous consequences in the South China Sea.

Above all, he can't allow the world to think Putin has beaten him – and the one thing we all know about Trump is that he doesn't like to lose.