The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, threatened personally to attack former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson with a missile attack just before to order Russian forces into Ukraine. This is what the ex-prime minister, quoted by AFP, claims.
The apparent threat came in a telephone conversation just before the start of the war on February 24, according to a new BBC documentary to be broadcast on Monday.
Johnson and other Western leaders rushed to Kyiv to show support for Ukraine and try to fend off a Russian attack.
“At one point he threatened me and said, ‘Boris, I don’t want to hurt you, but with a missile it will only take a minute’ or something like that,” Johnson quoted Putin as saying.
Johnson emerged as one of the most passionate Western supporters of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
But before the war he claimed that has struggled to convince Putin that there is no immediate prospect for Ukraine to join NATO, while warning it that any invasion would mean “more NATO, not less NATO” on Russia’s borders.
On the missile threat, Johnson added: “I think from the very calm tone that he took it seemed that he was just mocking my attempts to get him to negotiate.”
The BBC documentary outlines the growing divide between the Russian leader and the West in the years leading up to the invasion of Ukraine.
Furthermore Zelensky reflects on his thwarted ambitions to joined NATO before Russia attacked.
