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Vladimir Putin threatened to assassinate Boris Johnson in the run-up to the Ukraine war, it emerged last night.

The former prime minister said the Russian leader had bragged it would ‘take only a minute’ to kill him with a missile after he warned him to abandon his plans to attack Ukraine.

The astonishing threat was made in February last year after Mr Johnson visited Kyiv to assure Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky that Britain would back his country if Russia invaded.

Mr Johnson said that on his return, he had ‘a very long, most extraordinary call’ with Putin. At the time, the Russian president was publicly denying that he planned to invade Ukraine, despite massing tens of thousands of troops on its borders.