Kremlin says Boris Johnson’s claim Vladimir Putin threatened to target him a ‘lie’

The Kremlin dismisses Boris Johnson’s claims Putin threatened to target him in an attack, suggesting he misunderstood the Russian president.

Boris Johnson claims Vladimir Putin threatened him personally in a phone call. Picture: AFP.

The Kremlin has dismissed as a “lie” accusations from former British prime minister Boris Johnson that Vladimir Putin personally threatened him with a missile attack, telling him he could be killed in “a minute.”.

“What Mr Johnson said is not true. More precisely it’s a lie,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

“Moreover, this is either a conscious lie — then you need to ask Mr Johnson for what purpose he chose this version of events — Or it was unintentional and in fact he didn’t understand what President Putin was talking to him about.”

The apparent threat came in a telephone call just before Moscow ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022, according to a new BBC documentary to be broadcast on Monday.

Mr Johnson and other Western leaders had gone to Kyiv, intent on showing support for Ukraine and to deter a Russian attack.

“He sort of threatened me at one point and said, ‘Boris, I don’t want to hurt you, but with a missile, it would only take a minute’, or something like that,” Mr Johnson quoted the Russian president as saying.

Then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visits Kyiv in 2022. Picture: AFP.

He added: “I 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.”

However Mr Peskov said: “I know what was discussed during this conversation … There were no missile threats.”

Mr Johnson emerged as one of the most impassioned Western backers of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the early months of the war.

But prior to the invasion, he says he told Mr Putin that there was no imminent prospect of Ukraine joining NATO, while warning him that any invasion would mean “more NATO, not less NATO” on Russia’s borders.

“He said, ‘Boris, you say that Ukraine is not going to join NATO any time soon. What is any time soon?’ And I said, ‘well it’s not going to join NATO for the foreseeable future. You know that perfectly well’.”

The BBC documentary charts the growing divide between the Russian leader and the West in the years before the invasion of Ukraine.

It also features Mr Zelensky reflecting on his thwarted ambitions to join NATO prior to Russia’s attack.

“If you know that tomorrow Russia will occupy Ukraine, why don’t you give me something today I can stop it with?” he says.

“Or if you can’t give it to me, then stop it yourself.”