(Moscow) A Russian diplomat said the British ambassador in Moscow was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday, to protest to it Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “rude” comments about President Vladimir Putin.
Posted at 12:49 PM
Russia “resolutely” protested to Deborah Bronnert over “the rude public statements of the British authorities towards Russia, its leader and officials as well as the Russian people,” it identified in a press release.
The Russian diplomat stressed that “in a polite society, it is customary to apologize for statements of this kind,” denouncing “unacceptable insulting speech.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told German broadcaster ZDF Tuesday evening that Vladimir Putin would not have launched the attack on Ukraine if he had been a woman. He then denounced this Russian military operation as an “excellent example of male intoxication”, at the end of the G7 summit in Germany.
For his part, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told LBC radio on Wednesday evening that “President Putin’s view of himself and the world is that of a little man, a macho look.”
Mr. Wallace was also angered by a spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy, Maria Zakharova, accusing her of “threatening everyone with nuclear weapons” every week.
In summoning the British ambassador, the Russian Foreign Ministry also stressed that it was “unacceptable” that British officials “willfully disseminate false information, including alleged threats from the Russian side to ‘use nuclear weapons,'” according to the Russian press release.
