Boris Johnson has denied intervening to override security concerns about the peerage granted to Evgeny Lebedev. It comes after the Prime Minister was urged to tell a powerful parliamentary committee everything he knows about the Russian-born media mogul’s elevation to the House of Lords.
Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper wrote to Mr Johnson following a report in The Sunday Times which alleged that security services withdrew an assessment that granting a peerage to the Moscow-born son of an ex-KGB agent posed a national security risk, after the Prime Minister personally intervened. Asked about the claims on Monday, Mr Johnson told reporters: “That is simply incorrect… It suits (Russian president Vladimir) Putin’s agenda to try to characterise this as a struggle between the West and Russia.
“It suits his agenda to say that the UK, that we in Nato countries, are anti-Russia, European countries are now anti-Russian. It’s very, very, very important that we get the message over that we’re not anti-Russian, we’re not against Russians. Our quarrel is simply with the regime and the aggression of Vladimir Putin.”
