{"id":264406,"date":"2023-01-30T08:36:53","date_gmt":"2023-01-30T08:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=264406"},"modified":"2023-02-01T08:36:24","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T08:36:24","slug":"boris-johnson-says-putin-claimed-he-could-send-missile-to-hit-uk-in-a-minute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=264406","title":{"rendered":"Boris Johnson says Putin claimed he could send missile to hit UK \u2018in a minute\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harry Taylor \u2013 The Guardian Jan 30, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Boris Johnson has said that Vladimir Putin<\/a> claimed he could have sent a missile to hit Britain \u201cwithin a minute\u201d, in a call just before the invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The former prime minister\u2019s comments came in a three-part documentary for BBC Two looking at the conflict in Ukraine<\/a> and the lead up to Russia\u2019s invasion in February last year.<\/p>\n

It had been in a conversation about hypothetical support for Nato on Russia\u2019s borders if Putin decided to invade, as Johnson tried to talk Putin down.<\/p>\n

He told the makers of Putin vs the West that he didn\u2019t regard Putin\u2019s comments as a threat. He went on to become one of the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy\u2019s biggest supporters and has visited Kyiv since resigning as prime minister.<\/p>\n

The show will air on BBC Two on Monday at 9pm.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe sort of threatened me at one point and said, \u2018Boris, I don\u2019t want to hurt you, but with a missile, it would only take a minute\u2019, or something like that,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think from the very relaxed tone that he was taking, the sort of air of detachment that he seemed to have, he was just playing along with my attempts to get him to negotiate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson had warned that there would be tougher western sanctions if Russia invaded, and that support for Nato would increase \u2013 even if Ukraine was not close to becoming a member.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018Boris, you say that Ukraine is not going to join Nato anytime soon \u2026 What is anytime soon?\u2019, and I said, \u2018Well it\u2019s not going to join Nato for the foreseeable future. You know that perfectly well,\u2019\u201d Johnson said of the call with Putin.<\/p>\n

Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, also spoke in the documentary about a visit to Moscow in February in an unsuccessful attempt to negotiate and see off war. He met his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, as well as the chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember saying to minister Shoigu, \u2018They will fight\u2019 and he said, \u2018My mother is Ukrainian; they won\u2019t!\u2019 He also said he had no intention of invading,\u201d Wallace said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat would be \u2018vran\u2019e\u2019 in the Russian language. \u2018Vran\u2019e\u2019 I think is sort of a demonstration of bullying or strength: I\u2019m going to lie to you. You know I\u2019m lying. I know you know I\u2019m lying and I\u2019m still going to lie to you. He knew I knew and I knew he knew. But I think it was about saying: I\u2019m powerful.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the fairly chilling but direct lie of what they were not going to do that I think to me confirmed they were going to do it. I remember as we were walking out General Gerasimov said, \u2018Never again will we be humiliated. We used to be the fourth army in the world, we\u2019re now number two. It\u2019s now America and us.\u2019 And there in that minute was that sense of potentially why [they were doing this].\u201d<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

However, the former British prime minister says that he didn\u2019t consider Putin\u2019s comments a threat because of the \u201cvery relaxed tone that he was taking, the sort of air of detachment that he seemed to have\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":264408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-264406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=264406"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264418,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264406\/revisions\/264418"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/264408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=264406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=264406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=264406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}