LONDON – Boris Johnson has revealed that Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to target him with a missile during a phone conversation in February 2022.
The former British prime minister said Putin made his comments during a “very long” and “extraordinary” call in which Johnson warned him that an attack on Ukraine would trigger Western sanctions and reinforce NATO troops on Russia’s borders.
Johnson tried to dissuade Putin from launching his full-scale invasion by saying that Ukraine would not join the transatlantic military alliance “for the foreseeable future”.
“He threatened me once, and he said ‘Boris, I don’t want to hurt you, but with a missile, it will only take a minute’ – something like that. Jolly,” Johnson said in a BBC documentary released monday,
“But I think he was taking on a very relaxed tone, kind of an air of detachment, he was just playing along with my attempts to make conversation.”
Putin’s comments were not mentioned in any readout of the call broadcast by Downing Street and the Kremlin.
According to the documentary, Britain’s Defense Secretary Ben Wallace returned from a trip to Moscow in late February with assurances from his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, that Russia would not invade Ukraine, but said both sides knew that was a lie.
Part of his skepticism stemmed from a recent comment made by Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s chief of general staff and commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, in which Wallace said Russia would “never be humiliated again.”