PUTIN ‘THREATENED ME’ WITH MISSILE STRIKE, FORMER UK PM JOHNSON SAYS

Mon 30 January 2023:

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson claims Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened him with a missile strike during a phone call in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine.

Johnson, speaking to the BBC for a documentary, said Putin 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, he was just playing along with my attempts to get him to negotiate.”

President Putin had been “very familiar” during the “most extraordinary call”, Johnson said.

Nine days after Mr Johnson’s conversation with President Putin, on 11 February, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace flew to Moscow to meet his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu.

Kremlin says Johnson lied about missile threat

The Kremlin has accused Boris Johnson of lying after the former British prime minister said President Vladimir Putin had threatened the United Kingdom with a missile strike during a phone call in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that what Johnson said was not true, or “more precisely, a lie”.

The Kremlin leader, he said, had simply pointed out that “if Ukraine joined Nato the potential deployment of Nato or US missiles near Russia’s border would mean that any missile could reach Moscow within minutes”.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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