- James Landale and William McLennan
- BBC News
January 30, 2023
Credit, Getty Images
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Johnson said Putin adopted a “very relaxed tone” and a “detached aura” during the call
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Russian President Vladimir Putin made an “extraordinary” phone call shortly before he invaded Ukraine, threatening to hit him with a rocket.
According to Johnson, who was then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Putin declared that “it would only take a minute”.
The comment was reportedly made after the then British Prime Minister warned during a “very long” phone call in February 2022 that the war was going to be a “total disaster”.
Details of the conversation are revealed in the BBC documentary Putin vs. the West, which looks at the Russian president’s interactions with world leaders.
Johnson reportedly warned Putin that an invasion of Ukraine would result in Western sanctions and more NATO troops on Russia’s borders.
He is also said to have tried to deter Russian military action by telling Putin that Ukraine would not join NATO “in the near future”.
However, as Johnson reported, “He threatened me once and said, ‘Boris, I don’t want to hurt you, but with a missile it would only take a minute’ or something.”
“But I think because of the very relaxed tone he was taking, the kind of distance he seemed to have, he was just toying with my attempts to persuade him to negotiate.”
According to Johnson, Putin was “very friendly” during the “most unusual phone call”.
No reference to the dialogue emerged in the recordings of the call from Downing Street and the Kremlin. It’s impossible to know if Putin’s threat was genuine.
However, given previous Russian attacks on Britain most recently in Salisbury in 2018 Johnson probably would have had no choice but to take any threat from the Russian leader seriously, however light.
Credit, Getty Images
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Boris Johnson received a phone call from Putin the day after meeting Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv
Nine days later, on February 11, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace flew to Moscow to meet his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu.
The BBC documentary reveals that Wallace left with assurances that Russia would not invade Ukraine, but both sides knew it was a lie.
He described it as a “show of intimidation or violence, like I’m lying to you, you know I’m lying and I know you know I’m lying and I still will lie to you”.
“I think it was about saying, ‘I am powerful,'” Wallace explained.
He said the “rather scary but direct lie” confirmed his belief that Russia was going to invade Ukraine.
As he left the meeting, he recounts that General Valery Gerasimov Russia’s chief of staff told him: “We will never be humiliated again.”
Less than two weeks later, as the tanks crossed the border on February 24, Johnson received a latenight call from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“Zelensky is very, very calm,” says Johnson. “But, he tells me, you know, they attack everywhere.”
The British prime minister at the time said he had offered to take Zelenskyy to safety. “He didn’t accept that offer. He heroically stayed where he was.”
Documentary ‘Putin Vs the West’ airs this Monday (30/01) at 21:00 on BBC Two Channel and is available in the UK on iPlayer.