Boris Johnson’s failure to force Russia to stop bombing Syria compared to the appeasement of Hitler

BORIS JOHNSON’s masterplan to force the Russians out the Syrian skies fell apart last night as European leaders baulked at the prospect of military action.

The Foreign Secretary was reduced to pleading with Vladimir Putin to “show mercy” as the West failed to agree any way forward to stop the bloodshed in Aleppo.

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Within hours, furious Labour MP John Woodcock accused the West of “collective cowardice” – and compared it to the 1930s appeasement of Adolf Hitler.

Speaking after a London summit with US Secretary of State John Kerry, the French, Germans and other allies Mr Johnson raised the prospect of fresh sanctions.

But he signalled that his wish of a ‘no-fly’ or ‘no-bomb’ zone to protect the 275,000 civilians in Aleppo now appeared a remote prospect.

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The Tory said: “No option is in principle off the table, but be in no doubt that these so-called military options are extremely difficult.

“And there is, to put it mildly, a lack of political appetite in most European capitals and certainly in the West for that kind of solution at present.

“So we’ve got to work with the tools we have – the tools we have are diplomatic.

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“I think the most powerful weapon we have at the moment is our ability to make President Putin and the Russians feel the consequences of what they are doing.”

Mr Kerry added: “I haven’t seen a big appetite in Europe for people to go to war.

“I don’t see the Parliaments of European countries ready to declare war, I don’t see a lot of countries deciding that that’s the better solution here.”

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A no-fly zone would raise the prospect of having to shoot down Russian jets.

The Foreign Secretary yesterday proposed no-bomb zones which would urge the Russians and Assad regime to spare hospitals and other specific buildings.

An exhausted John Kerry – in London after talks with the Russians and Iran on Saturday – insisted Barack Obama had ruled nothing out.

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But he said “we are pursuing diplomacy because those are the tools that we have.”

He added: “It’s easy to say where’s the action, but what is the action? I have a lot of people who have a lot of trouble defining that.”

On Thursday Boris Johnson told MPs “we should be looking again at more military options”.

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Yesterday he insisted Bashar Al-Assad and Russia would never win the war in Syria.

But he was criticised by Peter Ford, a former UK ambassador to Syria, for his aggressive stance towards Russia.

Last week the Foreign Secretary enraged the Kremlin by calling on the public to protest outside the Russian embassy in London in a bid to shame Russia into ending the bombing of Aleppo.

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Peter Ford, the former UK ambassador to Syria, said Boris’ attitude explained why Britain had not been invited to Saturday’s talks in Lausanne, Switzerland.

He said: “We were excluded because we had excluded ourselves.”

Mr Ford added it was disappointing there had been no deal to allow “safe passage” for rebel soldiers to escape Aleppo in a bid to end the carnage.