Kremlin Says Johnson's Claim About Putin Threatening Him With Missile Strike is Bold-Faced Lie

MOSCOW, January 30 (Sputnik) - The claims made by former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson that Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened him with a missile strike are patently false, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.

Earlier in the day, Johnson shared the purported details of a conversation he'd had with Putin shortly before the start of Russia's military operation in Ukraine with the BBC. According to the former prime minister's account, Putin threatened him with a missile strike by saying "Boris, I don't want to hurt you but, with a missile, it would only take a minute or something like that. Jolly."

"No, what Mr. Johnson said is not true; more precisely, it is a lie. Moreover, I will tell you that this is either a conscious lie (then, probably, the question is for what purpose he chose such a version of events), or it was unconscious, and in fact he did not understand what President Putin had told him. In the latter case it would be a little worrisome for our president's interlocutors," Peskov told reporters in a press briefing.

The spokesman added that he is personally familiar with the details of Putin's conversation with Johnson, which took place on February 2, 2022.

"I know what was discussed during this conversation and once again officially repeat — [the missile claims are] a lie. There were no threats of missile strikes. Speaking about the challenges to Russia's security, President Putin noted that if Ukraine joins NATO, the potential deployment of NATO or American missiles at our borders will mean that any missile will reach Moscow in a matter of minutes," Peskov said.

Peskov reserved judgement on the BBC documentary, 'Putin vs. the West', in which Johnson appeared, but suggested that "if the rest of the film will be in the same vein" as his missile claims, he wouldn't advise viewers to "waste your time" watching it.

Boris Johnson was one of several Western leaders Putin spoke with amid the escalation of the long-running security crisis in the Donbass in January and February of 2022, which culminated in Russia launching a military operation to "demilitarize" and "de-Nazify" Ukraine amid concerns over Kiev's ambitions to crush the Donbass republics and join the Western bloc.

In the spring of 2022, Johnson reportedly flew to Kiev to sabotage the inklings of a draft peace agreement hammered out by Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in Belarus and Turkey, urging the Zelensky government to fight on instead of accepting Russia's peace terms, which were said to include security for the Donbass and Crimea and no Ukrainian NATO membership, in return for security guarantees for Kiev. Johnson's trip, ostensibly at Washington's behest, resulted in the conflict being prolonged, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of additional Ukrainian and Russian service members and Donbass militiamen, as well as civilians. At the same time, the delivery of tens of billions of dollars-worth of increasingly advanced NATO military hardware to Kiev has escalated tensions dramatically and put the planet on the brink of a global conflagration involving nuclear powers, with no end in sight. Russian officials have openly dubbed the Ukrainian crisis as a Russia-NATO proxy war, with Ukraine's defense minister recently admitting freely that Kiev is "carrying out NATO's mission" against Moscow and is "de facto" already a member of the Western military alliance.