Johnson defended in July that he did not discuss government issues in a meeting with a former Russian KGB agent.

July 26 () –

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, defended in a hearing at the beginning of the month before British parliamentarians that he did not discuss government affairs in his meeting with the former agent of the Russian State Security Committee (KGB), Alexander Lebedev, when he held the post of Secretary of Foreign Affairs.

“Keeping the British people safe should be a government priority, but this web of shady relationships shows that the Conservatives cannot be trusted for our national security,” Labor’s Angela Rayner said at the hearing, the content of which has emerged on Tuesday. in the British media.

Johnson admitted in July that he met the Russian businessman in April 2018 on a trip to a restored castle in the Italian city of Perugia owned by Evgeny Lebedev, Alexander’s son, for a weekend party after attending a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels.

As reported by ‘The Guardian’, the prime minister confirmed having met privately with Lebedev, also former owner of the newspaper ‘The Independent’, and claimed to have informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of this meeting.

The prime minister thus had to face the different questions from the parliamentarians in the absence of officials at said meeting. In this way, he was asked to write a letter to inform about the nature of the meeting.

In the letter, the British prime minister insisted that the trip was “in line with established security protocols”. “It would not have been normal practice for public officials or security personnel to accompany me to such a private social occasion,” he defended, as reported by the BBC and the Huffington Post.

“At the time, the Lebedev company owned the ‘Evening Standard’ and the ‘Independent,’ and the London Live television company. Their ownership and involvement in publishing British newspapers was not disputed,” he wrote in his letter, as reported by ‘The Telegraph’.

Alexander Lebedev, who worked for a time as a spy for the KGB intelligence services, was posted as a spy in London in 1988. After the fall of the Soviet Union, he went into business.