Boris Johnson knew special operation and received threats from Putin
2023.01.30 04:41
Boris Johnson knew special operation and received threats from Putin
By Ray Johnson
Budrigannews.com – During a phone call prior to the invasion of Ukraine, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin had threatened him with a missile strike.
In an interview for a documentary, Johnson told the BBC that the Russian leader had inquired about the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO, to which he replied that it would not be “for the foreseeable future.”
“He once made a threat against me, saying something like, “Boris, I don’t want to hurt you but, with a missile, it would only take a minute,” or something along those lines. Johnson reminisced about the “very long” and “most extraordinary” call in February 2022 that followed the then-prime minister’s visit to Kyiv.
“But I think he was just playing along with my attempts to get him to negotiate,” I said. “But I think from the very relaxed tone that he was taking, the sort of air of detachment that he seemed to have.”
After the 2018 poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in the British city of Salisbury, relations between Moscow and London had fallen to their lowest point in decades before Russia invaded Ukraine.
Johnson, who resigned in September amid a slew of scandals, sought to make London Kyiv’s most important ally in the West. He paid several visits to Kyiv while in office and frequently called Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the president of Ukraine.
