Boris Johnson reveals in a BBC documentary aired on Monday January 30 how Vladimir Putin "sort of threatened" him before the invasion of Ukraine. The former British Prime Minister returns, in this three-part film, to his telephone conversation with the Russian President in February 2022, when he returned from a surprise visit to kyiv.
At that time, Mr. Putin continued to maintain that he had no intention of invading his neighbor, despite the influx of Russian soldiers into the border regions. Mr. Johnson says he warned him of the harsh penalties Westerners would face if he went down this path.
"He said to me, 'Boris, you're saying Ukraine isn't going to join NATO anytime soon. What do you mean by: not anytime soon?” “, Reports the former head of the British government. "Well, she's not going to join NATO in the near future, you know that perfectly well," continues the former British leader, an early supporter of the Ukrainians.
"A missile would take a minute"
"At one point he kind of threatened me and said, 'Boris, I don't mean to hurt you, but, with a missile, it would take a minute,'" Mr Johnson continued. "I think from the very relaxed tone he took, the detachment he seemed to have, he was playing off my attempts to get him to negotiate," he adds.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, on Monday denied the words attributed to Vladimir Putin: “What Mr. Johnson said is a lie. It's either a deliberate lie, but then for what purpose? Either it is an unintentional lie, insofar as he did not understand what President Putin was telling him. He adds, “There was no missile threat. Speaking of the challenges for Russia's security, President Putin had noted that, in the event of Ukraine's entry into NATO - and the possibility of deployment of Alliance missiles or American missiles on our borders – that would mean that a missile could reach Moscow in minutes. If this passage has been misinterpreted, then it is a very embarrassing situation,” he continued.
Sunday, January 22, more than four months after leaving Downing Street, the former British Prime Minister reappeared, to everyone's surprise, in Ukrainian lands. After visiting the towns of Borodianka and Boutcha, heavily affected by the fighting, he had taken the direction of kyiv, where Volodymyr Zelensky was waiting for him.
In the documentary, the Ukrainian president describes, meanwhile, how he became enraged at the attitude of Westerners at the time: "If you know that tomorrow Russia is going to invade Ukraine, why is that that you don't give me today what to stop it? If you can't, then stop it yourself. »
