Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson (shown here in May 2022) has said that President Vladimir Putin didn’t seem serious about avoiding war in the days before Russia invaded Ukraine. In a new documentary released Monday, he says that at one point Putin told the British leader it would be easy to kill him with a missile.
Matt Dunham/AP
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Matt Dunham/AP
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson (shown here in May 2022) has said that President Vladimir Putin didn’t seem serious about avoiding war in the days before Russia invaded Ukraine. In a new documentary released Monday, he says that at one point Putin told the British leader it would be easy to kill him with a missile.
Matt Dunham/AP
LONDON — Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that President Vladimir Putin didn’t seem serious about avoiding war in the days before Russia invaded Ukraine — and at one point told the British leader it would be easy to kill him with a missile.
The Kremlin denied Putin made any such threat.
In a documentary released Monday, Johnson says he called Putin in February 2022 and tried to dissuade him from war, telling him Ukraine would not be joining NATO in the foreseeable future – a longstanding concern of the Russian leader – and warning invasion would bring “massive” Western sanctions.
“From the very relaxed tone that he was taking, the sort of air of detachment that he seemed to have, he was…