It argues that associations of independent sovereign states, such as NATO, are far better equipped to deal with tyrants like Putin than slow-moving bodies such as the EU.
The report, published by the think-tank, the Centre for Brexit Policy, identifies the UK’s leadership of the West’s increasingly robust response to the Russian despot as one of the biggest gains of Brexit.
It points out that in the immediate run-up to the invasion and for the next nine months the UK spent more on military assistance to Kyiv (£3.7 billion) than all the EU institutions combined (£2.8 billion).
The report, Putin’s War at Year’s End, singles out former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and defence secretary Ben Wallace for special praise for their swiftness in taking action.
It was written for the CBP by defence expert Professor Gwythian Prins, a former adviser to the MoD, NATO and the UN.
“Ukraine was saved from defeat by Day Six {of the war} by two men and one country, who were equally but differently indispensable," he writes.
“It was good fortune, perhaps, that the British minister of defence was himself a former combat-decorated Scots Guards captain with a hard-charging reputation that he brought with him into politics.
“Ben Wallace did not require advisers to tell him what the Ukrainians needed if they were to have a fighting chance
“Double fortune for Ukraine was that Wallace’s prime minister was the most charismatic and consequential if mercurial, politician of his generation and also a man with a deep and exotic hinterland outside politics.
“Wallace explained to Boris Johnson that what the Ukrainians required in the first instance were immediate supplies of man-pack ‘fire and forget’ anti-tank weapons.
“Johnson gave his minister full backing to ride over the reservations of the British securocrats who, left to their own devices, would not have made the transfers at scale, at pace and in the face of German opposition in particular, with President Macron’s grand-standing solo diplomacy at its back.”
The report shows how the UK’s decisive military assistance in the first week of the Russian blitzkrieg, intended to seize the capital Kyiv and to kill Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskeyy, was only possible because of Brexit and because it was no longer hamstrung by the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy.
It states that: “The United Kingdom exercised decisive sovereign will in this most indispensable initial emergency sustainment. It simply could not have done this had it still been under the bureaucratic suzerainty of the European Union and its actual leadership in the Commission.
“During those critical days when Germany was actively obstructive and France was free-lancing, the EU institutions were passive verging on catatonic.”
Last week Mr Johnson said Brexit allowed the UK to “do things differently” when it came to providing weapons to Ukraine.