LONDON, January 30. /TASS/. The remarks made by former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson about his phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin in February of last year call into question the British politician’s sanity and lead to an escalation of tensions in Europe, the Russian embassy in the UK said in a statement handed over to TASS on Monday.
"The dust has not yet settled after he [Johnson - TASS] called the Normandy Format a ‘diplomatic imitation,’ as he once again, by his own words, called into question the level of his responsibility, competence and sanity as an interlocutor. We are talking about the phone call he had with Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 2, 2022, during which he imagined that he had heard threats of some nuclear missile strike - almost at him personally. We would like to calm the ex-Prime Minister down: he is not in any danger," the embassy said.
"While deliberately violating the confidentiality of talks between the two leaders, Johnson also managed to distort their contents, giving it the exact opposite meaning," the embassy said.
The mission underscored that Johnson’s remarks, as well as statements made by British House Defense Committee chairman Tobias Ellwood, "lead only to further escalation of the sharp military-political tensions on the European continent and to deepening of the confrontation that the UK is being pulled into further and further every day."
The embassy underscored that "British subjects would do well to ask themselves whether the representatives of the ruling political class of their country comprehend the responsibility for their mindless actions, and whether they calculated their potential consequences."
"For us, the answer is obvious," the embassy concluded.
Johnson’s statements
On January 29, the British media published Johnson’s remarks from the ‘Putin vs the West,’ documentary, in which the former Prime Minister claimed that, during a "very long" and "most extraordinary" phone call in February 2022, the Russian President allegedly sought to intimidate Johnson in response to his warning regarding the unacceptability of a military operation in Ukraine. In particular, Johnson claimed that Putin "threatened" him by mentioning missiles; meanwhile, the ex-Prime Minister was not sure about the exact words that were used that day. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called Johnson’s claims of missile "threats" from Putin a lie.
Meanwhile, on Monday, Tobias Ellwood called on the British government to get ready for a direct standoff between the UK and Russia and to increase defense spending.