The Kremlin said today that former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson lied when he said that President Vladimir Putin had threatened him with missiles during a phone call ahead of the invasion of Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Johnson’s words were not true, or, “more precisely, it was a lie,” noting that “there were no missile threats.”

“Be it a deliberate lie –and you must ask Mr. Johnson why he chose to put it that way.– or it’s an unconscious lie, and he really didn’t understand what Putin was telling him.”

Peskov said Putin explained to Johnson that if Ukraine joined the NATO alliance, placing American or NATO missiles near Russia’s borders would mean any missile could reach Moscow within minutes, adding that there may have been a misunderstanding.

“If you understand this passage in this way, then this is a very uncomfortable situation,” Peskov said.

What’s more, the former British prime minister reveals in a BBC documentary that Vladimir Putin “threatened” him days before he ordered his army to invade Ukraine, telling him that “with a missile it would take a minute.” .

In a three-part documentary, the first of which will air tonight on BBC Second, the former Conservative government leader refers to his “particularly lengthy” and “excellent” conversation with the Russian president following his visit to Kyiv in early February 2022. . .

At the time, Vladimir Putin claimed he had no intention of ordering an invasion of the neighboring country, despite the massive Russian troop buildup on the border with Ukraine.

Boris Johnson says he warned the Russian president that the West would impose tough sanctions on Russia if it chose the path of armed conflict.

“He told me: ‘Boris, you are saying that Ukraine will not join NATO soon (…) What do you mean when you say ‘soon’?” Boris Johnson says. “Well, it won’t join NATO in the near future, you know that very well,” he adds in response to the response of the former British prime minister and a big supporter of Kyiv.

“At one point, he seemed to threaten me, saying, ‘Boris, I don’t want to hurt you, but with a rocket it will take a minute’ or something like that,” says Boris Johnson.

“I think given his very calm tone, the aloofness he seemed to have, he was simply reacting to my attempts to get him to negotiate,” adds the former prime minister, who left 10 Downing Street at the start of the September after a series of scandals. .

The documentary also features Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who made no secret of his anger at the behavior of Western leaders before the start of the war: “If you know that tomorrow Russia will invade Ukraine, why don’t you give me something I can do with to stop it? And if you can’t, stop it yourself,” says Johnson.

In the same documentary, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace recounts a trip to Moscow in February 2022 as part of his attempt to prevent the outbreak of war. He says that he met with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.

“I remember telling Minister Shoigu that there would be a war, he replied: “My mother is Ukrainian, there won’t be.” He also said he wasn’t going to break in,” Wallace said.

“This is what in Russian they called “lie”. “Lies” means a show of force, intimidation: I will lie to you. You will know that I am lying. I’ll know that you know that I’m lying, I’ll lie to you anyway. He knew that I knew and I knew that he knew. But I think the message he wanted to send was that he is strong.”

“I remember that when we left the rally, General Gerasimov said: “We will never be humiliated again.” We had the fourth largest army in the world, now we have the second largest. We are now America too.” And at that moment I had a feeling that this could potentially be the reason for their invasion, Wallace says.

Source: AFP, dpa, Reuters, APE-MPE.