Boris Johnson accused Vladimir Putin of threatening him: “A missile only takes a minute”

In a telephone conversation between the leaders of Russia and the United Kingdom, Vladimir Putin threatened Boris Johnson in an enigmatic sentence: “A missile only takes a minute”. This was recounted by the former Prime Minister in a BBC documentary, the first part of which opens tonight.

This “very long” and “extraordinary” talk between Putin and Johnson occurred last year, at the beginning of February, when the Russian president still denied his intentions to invade Ukraine.

According to Johnson, at that time he warned him of the sanctions that Western countries could apply to Russia if they invaded Ukraine.

Russia accused Ukraine of committing “neo-Nazi” crimes on Holocaust Remembrance Day

Johnson claims that Putin told him: “Boris, you say that Ukraine will not join NATO so soon. (…) What do you mean by ‘so soon’?

“Well, you know very well that you are not going to join NATO in the near future,” replied the former British leader, who has supported the Ukrainians from the beginning.

“At one point, he threatened me in a certain way and said: “Boris, I don’t want to hurt him, but with a missile, that would take a minute or so.”

The Kremlin denies Boris Johnson’s accusations.

“What Mr. Johnson said is a lie. Or is it a deliberate lie, but then for what purpose? Or it is an involuntary lie, in the sense that he did not understand what President Putin was telling him, ”Russian spokesman Dmitri Peskov told the press.

“There was no missile threat. Speaking of Russia’s security challenges, President Putin had pointed out that if Ukraine joined NATO and there was the possibility of Alliance missiles or US missiles being deployed on our borders, it would mean that a missile could reach Moscow. in a matter of minutes,” Peskov explained.

“If this passage was misinterpreted, it is a very unfortunate situation,” he continued. (YO)