Amid great pressure to replace Boris Johnson in Britain, a revelation by the British Prime Minister has come to "rock the boat". He said he had met with former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev at the height of the nerve agent Novichok poisoning case in Salisbury constituted a "serious security breach", according to opposition Labour.
Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper described the meeting between then British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Lebedev as "unthinkable" given the timing in the aftermath of a chemical attack on British soil.
During an appearance before a parliamentary committee on Wednesday, Johnson admitted for the first time that he had met with the Russian oligarch without officials present in April 2018.
We don't know what happened
Pressure has since escalated on the prime minister to explain the nature of that meeting, which took place just after a NATO meeting on how to respond to the Kremlin.
Speaking to Sky News today, Cooper said: "We don't know what happened at that meeting, we don't know whether the prime minister actually disclosed that there was going to be a meeting or whether he told officials later.
"It is simply inconceivable that at a time when we had a chemical attack on British soil and it was serious enough to call a NATO meeting on how to respond to Russia, the foreign secretary goes to meet with a former KGB agent, someone who has since been sanctioned by Canada for close ties to President Putin.
The meeting at that time shows an irresponsible disregard for national security risks. We need to know the facts about what happened and why on earth he was so irresponsible toward our national security at that time," Cooper said, among other things.
Source: RES - MPE
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