Former British prime minister Boris Johnson has urged US republicans to keep backing Democrat President Joe Biden's arms supplies to Ukraine.
The former PM flew to the US state of Texas to address some two dozen of the lone star state's of top conservative politicians, businessmen and campaign donors.
"I just urge you all to stick with it. It will pay off massively in the long run," Johnson told the gathering.
“You are backing the right horse. Ukraine is going to win. They are going to defeat Putin,” he insisted, despite news that day that the Russian forces had liberated the key Donbass city of Artemovsk.
Republicans in the US Congress are currently locked in a stand-off with the Democratic administration, which insists it must raise its 'debt ceiling' borrowing limit from $1.1 trillion to $1.5 trillion to cover spending approved in the annual budget.
But the octogenarian president has vowed the arms supplies will continue even if the federal government is forced to shut down.
Johnson's trip was organised by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA, a cross-party, pro-Ukraine Washington lobby group.
"We wanted to make that case outside of Washington — where we all live in a bubble — and to really take it to the heartland, to places like Texas, to get more support for Ukraine, and make the case to people who are sceptical about that support," said CEPA's Ukrainian-born president and CEO Alina Polyakova.
She added that Johnson enjoyed "a lot of credibility as well with the base of the Republican Party" because former US president Donald Trump "had nice things to say about him when he was the president."
Johnson has been one of the most strident supporters on the eastern shores of the Atlantic of Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.
In early April 2022 he flew to Kiev to urge Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to break off peace talks with Russia, which were on the verge of a peace agreement brokered by Turkey and Israel.
He also persuaded leaders of France, Germany and Italy, the three biggest European Union economies, to impose economic sanctions on Russia against their countries' economic interests.
Johnson was forced to resign in the the summer of 2022 after Chris Pincher, who he had appointed as deputy chief whip months earlier, groped a fellow Conservative Party MP at a posh private members' club in London's West End.
That prompted a mass walk-out from his cabinet led by then-chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak. Johnson's reputation had already been damaged by earlier scandals such as 'Partygate' and his expensive refurbishment of the PM's official Downing Street residence at the expense of Conservative Party funds.
His successor Liz Truss, another supporter of confrontation with Moscow, resigned after just six weeks in Downing Street and was replaced by Sunak, who has twice played host to Zelensky.