https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-64397745
Boris Johnson has said Vladimir Putin threatened him with a missile strike in an "extraordinary" phone call in the run-up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The then-prime minister said Mr Putin told him it "would only take a minute".
Mr Johnson said the comment was made after he warned the war would be an "utter catastrophe".
...
No reference to the exchange appeared in accounts released to the media of the call by Downing Street. But with all officially arranged phone calls, there are always detailed minutes taken by a Number 10 official and retained for the archive.
- BBC News, 30th Jan 2023
I do not expect the leaders of governments to openly tell the truth about every little detail that they might have. This is not because I think that there is some kind of deep level conspiracy (the world is far too complicated and the leaders are far too dog ignorant and incompetent for that to happen) but rather that actually telling the general public the truth, might actually have consequences which involve the deaths of many millions of people.
The war in Ukraine is such an example. Quite simply, Vladimir Putin in an unchecked steroid fueled career, has been allowed to do whatever the heck he likes and because as an ex-KGB operative he still likely has the support of people to cause covert violence to his direct enemies, doing whatever the heck he likes has involved exacting power for power's sake. The war in Ukraine is nothing more than a projection of power for power's sake; to retain power for power's sake. One of the particularly useful sources of information as to how Putin and by extension Russia sees Ukraine is the ex-Soviet Union newspaper Pravda. They have painted the past as an aberration and that Ukraine in their eyes was always part of Russia. Russia is merely trying to retake what was always theirs to begin with. In fact even the name Ukraine steams from the word for "borderlands".
Number Ten Downing Street, the offices therein, the Office of Cabinet, and the then installed First Lord Of The Treasury and Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, spoke with Vladimir Putin on the telephone last February and it is only now that Boris Johnson has said that Vladimir Putin threatened to kill him in a missile strike, on that telephone call.
This is the official minute put out by Number Ten at that time:
Of course we have no way of knowing what was actually said, although it is highly likely that at the Russian end, the phone call was being monitored. It is the height of naievity to think that any telephone call to any Russian agency, and probbably any Russian business, is not s being monitored. In that respect, the same rules should have applied to that telephone call as would apply to any standing microphone in any room in the world: that is that every microphone is a live microphone and that someone somewhere is listening.
Dear Russia,
If you are listening or reading this blog post, how's it gaan bro'?
Love, Rollo.
PS: Please don't annihalate me in a nuclear war. kthxbye
This blog post is not going to say anything about the actions of Boris Johnson in regards to this. Westminster Politics has an interesting method of dealing with its own. Rather, this blog post about the actions of the "British" press and I use scare quotation marks here because they may as well not be.
The tory press, like the rest of tory politics around the world, is a wen on society that needs to be lanced. The tory press in my country is just as bad and the only real difference is the accent (which they will then use as something exotic overseas) but the messaging is often identical. The tory press has no conscience and will try to destroy anyone who is their enemy; including in the face of very real and dangerous threats.
It should be noted that the tory press (and I use the word 'tory' as the ablative invective pejorative) was busy painting the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-Semite, despite not actually having any evidence of that. As long as the press repeats something often enough, the people will make it their truth.
At the time, Jeremy Corbyn frequently made statements from the lawns outside the halls at Westminster, calling for peace and diplomacy; which the press then twisted into shivs to try and paint him as a Putin sympathiser. One the surface Johnson was calling for peace but apparently secretly worried and Putin was always calling for peace, while at the same time arranging his toy soldiers. Somehow, Corbyn became the acceptable target from the tory press as well as so-called centrists, who all decided to hold his feet to the fire.
Jeremy Corbyn was a Member of Parliament when Able Archer 83 was going on; when the world got perilously close to accidental nuclear war. Corbyn was a member of the Stop The War Coalition which condemned the actions of his own Prime Minister Tony Blair in going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, on the basis that that war was unjust and as we subsequently found out (almost immediately) was built on lies. Watching this play out yet again; where Vladimir Putin is in charge, who in this case actually does have weapons of mass destruction, is all scarily familiar. We do not know where Putin's limits lie but there is a non-zero chance that he would use nuclear weapons because he is allowed to do whatever the heck he likes.
Corbyn was one of 11 MPs who signed a statement last February which condemned the actions of Putin and while the Labour Party basically tries to hack off its own head with a breadknife and condemn itself to Opposition for another 20 years, Mr Johnson's comments this week have more or less confirmed that Corbyn in calling for diplomacy was right. Not poking the bear was probably the best option; especially in the current light that what we now know is that he was actually wanting not to inadvertently cause nuclear Armageddon.
Remember the inscriptions on Vespasian's public toilets in Ancient Rome "Pecunia Non Olet", which means "Money Does Not Stink". Yet again we are reminded who the tory press work for. They work for whomever has money; which includes Russian oligarchs. They have no problem in dumping sewage on British politics, just as Putin would have no problem in dropping nuclear weapons on Boris Johnson. Corbyn was asking for calm and asking that the Russian bear not be poked and yet he was the enemy.
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