“We make this plea because Australia can punch well above its weight at no cost to the Australian taxpayer,” says the letter, whose signatories included health industry leader Dr Tanya Dus and Reverend Bill Crews, a Uniting Church minister and humanitarian. Both were also sanctioned by the Kremlin on Thursday.

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Abbott, who famously vowed to “shirt-front” Russian President Vladimir Putin following the MH17 tragedy, told this masthead he was “proud to be in good company”. He also paid tribute to the “late, great” Stefan Romaniw, co-chair of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations, who died suddenly this week in Poland after attending a conference in Lithuania.

Romaniw, 68, the former chairperson of the Victorian Multicultural Commission and Multicultural Arts Victoria, had rallied support for Ukraine in recent years against Russian aggression and was influential in the last push for Canberra to divert billions in “dirty money” held in Australia since it sanctioned Russian oligarchs and others deemed to have aided and abetted the invasion and the occupation of Ukraine.

The Liberal leader from 2010 to 2015, Abbott has become one of the leading conservative voices globally for Ukraine’s cause, having challenged US House Speaker Mike Johnson and the hold-out Republicans for blocking aid to Kyiv last year.

He told the Black Sea Security Forum in Odesa earlier this month that Ukraine was not just fighting for its own freedom, but the freedom of all countries that would be Putin’s subsequent targets.

“This is not a struggle that can be abandoned, just because it’s hard; because it’s much harder on the Ukrainians than it is on us,” he said. “Our best hope of keeping the global peace is not to abandon today’s struggle to prepare for tomorrow’s.”

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