Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tells a BBC documentary that before invading Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin “kind of threatened” him, saying, “One missile would last a minute.”
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In this three-part documentary, the first episode of which will be broadcast on BBC Two on Monday evening, the former British Prime Minister recounts his “very long” and “extraordinary” phone call with the Russian President following his visit to Kyiv at the beginning of last February.
At the time, despite the massive influx of Russian soldiers into the border regions, Vladimir Putin continued to claim that he had no intention of invading his Ukrainian neighbor.
Boris Johnson says he warned the Russian president about the harsh sanctions Westerners would impose if he went down that route.
“He said: ‘Boris, you say Ukraine will not join NATO any time soon. (…) What do you mean by “not so soon”?” says Boris Johnson.
“Well, she’s not going to join NATO any time soon, you know that for a fact,” the former British leader, an early supporter of the Ukrainians, continues.
“At one point he kind of threatened me and said, ‘Boris, I don’t want to hurt you, but with a rocket it would take a minute’ or something,” Boris Johnson continues.
“I think that because of his very relaxed tone and his apparent detachment, he toyed with my attempts to get him to negotiate,” adds the former British leader, who left Downing Street in early September following a spate of scandals.
In the documentary, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recounts how he got angry at the attitude of Westerners at the time: “If you know that Russia will invade Ukraine tomorrow, why on earth is what you are giving me today, not enough to stop it? If you can’t do it, stop doing it yourself.”