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Johnson, speaking to the BBC for a documentary, said the Russian
leader had asked him about the prospects of Ukraine joining NATO, to
which he had responded it would not be "for the foreseeable future".
"He threatened me at one point, and he said, 'Boris, I don't want to
hurt you but, with a missile, it would only take a minute' or
something like that. Jolly," Johnson said, recalling the "very long"
and "most extraordinary" call in February 2022 which followed a
visit by the then prime minister to Kyiv.
"But 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."
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters what Johnson had said
was not true, or "more precisely, a lie".
Relations between Moscow and London had sunk to their lowest level
in decades even before Russia invaded Ukraine, on the back of the
poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in the British city
of Salisbury in 2018.
Johnson, who stepped down in September in the wake of a series of
scandals, sought to position London as Kyiv's top ally in the West.
While in office he visited Kyiv several times and called Ukraine's
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy frequently.
He also visited again this month.
(Reporting by Kylie MacLellan; Editing by Christina Fincher and
Alison Williams)
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