Vladimir Putin tried to threaten former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He spoke about this The Telegraph on the eve of the release of his book “Seven Ways to Change the World” with a preface where he talks about his own experience with Putin.
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“I first met Putin in 2006 in the Kremlin, when I was still chancellor [казначейства]. They put me on a very low chair so that I looked up at him. He’s really quite a short man and wears these heels. Anyway, that day he took out his notes and began to read all the information he had about me, as if he wanted to prove that he knew more about me than I did. Therefore, when they say that Putin has changed and only now began to threaten, I can answer that he threatened me even then,” Brown said.
The meeting between Brown and Putin took place a few months before the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko.
Alexander Litvinenko died of acute radiation sickness on November 23, 2006, three weeks after drinking tea containing polonium-210 in the bar of the Millennium Hotel in London. In 2016, an official report was released on the investigation into the murder of Litvinenko by the Russian special services. It states that “the operation to kill Litvinenko was probably sanctioned by Mr. Patrushev and also by President Putin.”
Former British prime minister says he was sure Putin was involved in the assassination.
“The official report concluded that it was ‘probably’ him, but I was sure, with all the information, that Putin not only authorized this, but was going to commit more murders. Therefore, for many years after that, we protected people who could be on his list,” Brown said.
Ten years later, when state protection was lifted, “Salisbury happened.”
On March 4, 2018, in the city of Salisbury, Russian intelligence poisoned former GRU colonel Sergei Skripal, convicted at home for espionage and exchanged to the UK, and his daughter Yulia. Novichok nerve agent was used for poisoning. They survived.
“The only thing Putin understands is strength. He will use weakness. He is an opportunist to the nth degree,” Brown said.
The former prime minister believes that the current invasion of Ukraine was the result of the lack of a proper response from the West to the occupation of Crimea and the use of chemical weapons in Syria by the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
“Then we moved away, we didn’t take action. And Putin saw weakness in our response, so our mistakes originate from there,” Brown said.
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