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The Kremlin has rejected the claims of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who said that Vladimir Putin threatened to kill him with a missile. 

The spokesman for the Russian president - Dmitry Peskov - called this a "lie".

The former UK leader cited a private conversation he had with Putin before the war, in which the dictator told him: "I don't want to hurt you, but with a missile it will only take a minute."

Boris Johnson: Putin threatened to kill me with a missile

"What Mr. Johnson said is not true," Peskov was quoted as saying by the BBC.

"More precisely, it's a lie."

"What's more, it's either a deliberate lie - then you have to ask Mr. Johnson for what purpose he chose this version of events, or it's unintentional and he actually didn't understand what President Putin was talking about," the spokesman explained his point of view of the Kremlin.

"There were no threats to use missiles," he added to the BBC of the conversation in which the threat cited by Johnson came.

According to the former British prime minister, it happened just before Moscow ordered its troops to enter Ukraine in February 2022.