Boris Johnson says Putin threatened U.K. with missile strike; Kremlin calls it a lie – National | 24CA News
The Kremlin stated on Monday that former British prime minister Boris Johnson was mendacity when he stated President Vladimir Putin had threatened him with a missile strike throughout a telephone name within the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine.
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Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, advised reporters that what Johnson stated was not true, or “more precisely, a lie”.
Johnson, chatting with the BBC for a documentary, stated the Russian chief had threatened him with a missile strike that will “only take a minute”.
“He threatened me at one point, and he said, ‘Boris, I don’t want to hurt you but, with a missile, it would only take a minute’ or something like that,” Johnson stated.
Peskov stated: “There were no threats of missiles.”
“It is either a deliberate lie – so you have to ask Mr. Johnson why he chose to put it that way – or it was an unconscious lie and he did not in fact understand what Putin was talking to him about.”
Peskov stated Putin had defined to Johnson how, if Ukraine joined the Western NATO alliance, U.S. or NATO missiles positioned close to Russia’s borders would imply any missile might attain Moscow in a matter of minutes, and urged that there might have been a misunderstanding.
“If that’s how this passage was understood, then it’s a very awkward situation,” Peskov stated.
— Writing by Caleb Davis; Editing by Kevin Liffey
© 2023 Thomson Reuters
