Russia is deliberately aiding the bombing of hospitals in Syria, committing war crimes that will make it impossible for peace negotiations to begin, the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson has said.

Speaking to the Conservative party conference in Birmingham on Sunday, Johnson condemned the “continuing savagery of the Assad regime against the people of Aleppo”.

He said the devastation continued with “the complicity of the Russians in committing what are patently war crimes – bombing hospitals when they know they are hospitals and nothing but hospitals – is making it impossible for peace negotiations to begin”.

On Saturday, regime barrel bombs hit the largest hospital on the rebel-held side of Aleppo, a facility that was already out of action, having been subjected to heavy shelling in the week before, in an attack that the UN branded a war crime.

In a speech that was light on policy, Johnson opened with an anecdote about meeting Sergei Lavrov, Moscow’s foreign minister, at the UN last month, who said to him: “It was you guys who imposed democracy on us in 1990.”

Johnson said he had asked British diplomats and their foreign counterparts in the room for a show of hands in favour of democracy. “Much to my amazement, our opposite numbers just kept their hands on the table and gave us what we diplomats call the hairy eyeball, and of course they felt I was winding them up. And there is a sense in which my question was semi-satirical.

“But the exchange was also deeply serious and revealing about the way the world has changed.”

Johnson said he wanted a post-Brexit UK to be unashamed about promoting the values of liberal democracy and free markets around the world.

“We have been winded and sometimes lacking in confidence in these ideals, and if you look at the course of events in the last 10 years, I am afraid you can make the case that it is partly as a result of that lack of western self-confidence – political, military, economic – that in some material ways the world has got less safe, more dangerous, more worrying,” he said.



“Freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom to practise whatever religion you want and to live your life as you please. These freedoms are not inimical to prosperity – they are in fact essential to sustained growth.”



Johnson criticised what he said had been an “era of dithering and dubitation” and said Brexit should signal a new generation of global engagement.

“We stick up for free markets as vigorously as we stick up for democracy and human rights, and when all is said and done, my friends, and I know that not everyone will agree with this ... I believe that vote on 23 June was for economic freedom and political freedom as well,” he said.

Johnson gave a cautious signal that he would be prepared to back further military intervention in the right circumstances, citing the British action against the Somali pirates, during the civil war in Sierra Leone and during the Ebola crisis.

“In spite of Iraq, it is simply not the case that every military intervention has been a disaster,” he said. “Of course we don’t want to wield our hard power; we think an age before we do so.

“But when we give our armed services clear and achievable missions, we can still be remarkably effective, and with 2% of our GDP spent on defence, we will be the leading military player in western Europe for the foreseeable future.”