Boris Johnson trades jibes with Russian foreign minister about corruption, hacking and Ukraine in a VERY public spat
The Foreign Secretary had two face-to-face clashes with Sergei Lavrov today
BORIS Johnson traded withering blows with Russia’s powerful foreign minister after accusing the Kremlin of trying to hack Britain’s elections.
In an extraordinary press conference dust up, the Foreign Secretary went public for the first time with the claim that Putin’s cronies tried to derail the general election and last year’s EU referendum.
The accusation – after two hours of peace talks with Sergey Lavrov in Moscow – sparked a furious exchange between them.
Livid Mr Lavrov hit back at Boris to insist: “You have just made all this up”.
Sharing the same stage, the veteran Kremlin big beast also accused Boris of publicly contradicting him just to win positive media coverage.
The foreign minister said: “He’s afraid if he doesn’t contradict me, when gets back to the UK his reputation is going to be ruined”.
Boris Johnson is embroiled in a public row with Russian officials
Boris retorted: “Sergey, it’s your reputation I’m worried about”.
The election hacking row was sparked by a question on it to them from The Sun.
Mr Johnson insisted that there was "abundant evidence" of Russian interference in polls taken in the US, Germany, Denmark and France.
But when Mr Lavrov claimed Boris himself had recently told MPs there was no evidence Russia interfered in the Brexit referendum, the Foreign Secretary corrected him: “Not successfully I think is the word you need to introduce.
“I think it’s very important that we recognise Russian attempts to interfere in our elections, whether they may or may not have been successful.” Mr Johnson was in Moscow for 24 hours to confront Russia over its bids to sow chaos across Western democracies, as well as to try to rebuild bridges over world security challenges such as Syria and North Korea.
Declaring himself “a committed Russophile”, Boris said: “Be in no doubt that I want to see an improvement in the relations between our peoples.
“That in no way diminishes the difficulties that we currently have in our relationship at the moment.
“We have to find a way forward.” The pair clashed repeatedly during the visit – the first for a Britain’s foreign supremo in five years.
Boris also teased Mr Lavrov over the endemic corruption in the Russian government .
While boasting that 300 Bentley cars had been sold this year in Russia, he added “not, I believe necessarily to employees of the Foreign Ministry”.
Mr Lavrov also gave Boris a dressing down for criticising Russia in public, saying Russia would “prefer to talk about our reasons for mutual concern not through the microphone”.
And he lambasted Britain for refusing to cooperate fully with Russia’s spy service, the FSB, over terrorism, adding: “It is no secret that right now our relations are at a low point”.
Boris also revealed Lavrov has chided him for referring to feared 16th Century tsar Ivan the Terrible, saying: "Or Ivan the 4th, as Sergey said he was called".
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And Lavrov even joked about having rifled through Boris’s coat pockets after Mr Johnson handed it to him on arrival at the foreign ministry, saying: "I can say that there was nothing in the pockets of Boris's coat".
Boris replied: "So you’ve searched it already?”
