Newsman: Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened him with a missile strike during a phone call in the run up to the invasion of Ukraine, a charge denied by Moscow. But the Kremlin said former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s claim about Russian President Vladimir Putin threatening him with a missile in a phone call ahead of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “is a lie.”
Johnson, speaking to the BBC for a documentary, said the Russian leader had asked him about the prospects of Ukraine joining NATO, to which he had responded it would not be “for the foreseeable future”.
“He threatened me at one point, and he said, ‘Boris, I don’t want to hurt you but, with a missile, it would only take a minute’ or something like that. Jolly,” Johnson said, recalling the “very long” and “most extraordinary” call in February 2022 which followed a visit by the then prime minister to Kyiv.
“But I think from the very relaxed tone that he was taking, the sort of air of detachment that he seemed to have, and he was just playing along with my attempts to get him to negotiate.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters what Johnson had said was not true, or “more precisely, a lie”.
Boris Johnson stepped down in September in the wake of a series of scandals, sought to position London as Kyiv’s top ally in the West. While in office he visited Kyiv several times and called Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy frequently.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters during a regular conference call Monday,
“What Mr. Johnson said is not true. More precisely, it is a lie,”.
Peskov said he’s aware of what was discussed during that conversation, but stressed “there were no missile threats.”
According to Peskov, “Speaking about the security challenges for the Russian Federation, Putin noted that in the event of Ukraine joining NATO, the potential deployment of NATO or American missiles near our borders would mean that any missile would reach Moscow in a matter of minutes.”
“If this passage was understood in this way, it is a very awkward situation,” he added.
