Antifake
Russian state-controlled news agency TASS recently ran a story headlined “The Guardian: Boris Johnson may have encouraged prolonging the conflict in Ukraine for money.” The Russian article claimed:
“Former British Prime Minister (2019-2022) Boris Johnson may have supported prolonging the conflict in Ukraine in the interests of his sponsor, businessman Christopher Harborne, who holds a stake in the defense company QinetiQ. This was reported in an investigation by The Guardian.
According to the newspaper, in November 2022, after stepping down as prime minister, Johnson received a £1 million donation from Harborne. This payment may be the largest single donation ever made to a sitting member of the House of Commons, a position Johnson held until June 2023. The paper noted that Harborne owns 13% of QinetiQ, which supplies drones to Ukraine, suggesting a possible vested interest in the continuation of the conflict.
The Guardian emphasized that Johnson’s response to the investigation was extremely harsh. In his comment to the outlet, he called the story ‘pathetic nonsense.’ ‘You should be ashamed of yourselves. Why don’t you just rename your paper Pravda? Your stories are rubbish,’ he said.”
(The quote repeated by TASS appears to have come from a Guardian article about Johnson’s private sector activities since leaving office.)
The state-owned television channel Perviy Kanal (Channel One) went further, explicitly referring to the alleged payment as a “bribe”:
“One million pounds sterling for fueling the conflict in Ukraine. A bombshell revelation from The Guardian. According to the paper, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson didn’t just derail peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv in the spring of 2022, he did so for a hefty sum. It was Johnson, they claim, who convinced Ukraine to abandon the Istanbul agreements and to ‘just keep fighting.’ A few months later, he resigned, and, remarkably, soon received that same £1 million transfer from Christopher Harborne, a major shareholder in a British arms manufacturer that supplies drones and bomb-disposal robots to Kyiv. What else could this be, if not a bribe for services rendered? The Guardian asks.
While still a sitting MP, Johnson founded a private company. In November 2022, he recorded a £1 million donation from Harborne in the parliamentary register of members’ interests. The payment does not appear in the Electoral Commission’s database, which lists funds ‘allocated for the recipient’s political activity,’ suggesting it could have been a contribution to Johnson’s private business, The Guardian reports.
The authors of the report note that a year later, the former British prime minister reappeared in Kyiv, this time accompanied by the same arms-industry sponsor. They met with Ukrainian soldiers, and more recently, in 2025, Harborne’s company received a new contract benefiting the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The conclusion is obvious: perhaps there were bribes involved here as well.”
Other Kremlin-aligned outlets followed suit with sensational headlines: “The West reveals why Johnson sabotaged Russia-Ukraine talks” (Komsomolskaya Pravda), “Media uncover Johnson’s scheme to profit from the Russia-Ukraine conflict” (Gazeta.ru), “Boris Johnson accused of taking £1 million to fuel the conflict in Ukraine” (Vedomosti), and “Revealed: The sum paid to Johnson for prolonging the conflict in Ukraine” (URA.ru).
In reality, The Guardian did publish a story titled “The £1m man: why did Boris Johnson take his donor to Ukraine?” The article discussed a donation made by investor Chris Harborne to Johnson’s private fund after his resignation, and noted that Harborne accompanied Johnson on a September 2023 visit to Ukraine. However, the paper made no mention whatsoever of the failed Istanbul peace talks or any alleged bribe — those claims are clear fabrications by Kremlin propagandists.
The Insider has previously reported on how Vladimir Putin accused Johnson of sabotaging the 2022 Istanbul negotiations. It is true that Johnson’s visit to Kyiv on Apr. 9, 2022 came at a time when talks between Russian and Ukrainian representatives were proceeding in Turkey. However, a draft peace proposal dated Apr. 15, 2022 shows that those talks continued after Johnson’s trip. Johnson later told The Wall Street Journal that, while in Kyiv, he had merely expressed skepticism about the possibility of reaching a deal with Putin:
“I could not see for the life of me what the deal could be, and I thought that any deal with Putin was going to be pretty sordid.”
The donation from Harborne, moreover, came much later — in November 2022, after Johnson’s resignation that September. Harborne accompanied Johnson to Kyiv not during the April 2022 visit, but in September 2023, when Johnson traveled to Ukraine as a private citizen.
Portraying Harborne as a shadow “power broker” who prolonged the war for the sake of defense contracts is implausible. He is indeed a major shareholder in QinetiQ, a former branch of the UK Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, but hardly someone with influence over matters of war and peace. As The Guardian itself wrote:
“QinetiQ has interests in Ukraine, albeit not its biggest. Ukraine’s forces reportedly use the company’s Banshee drones and bomb-disposal robots. In April 2025, the UK Ministry of Defence announced QinetiQ would help Ukraine’s military make kit with 3D printers.”
It is difficult to imagine peace talks being sabotaged over a contract for a few hundred drones. The UK has supplied Ukraine with Banshee Jet 80+ kamikaze drones — small attack UAVs adapted from target drones used for pilot and air-defense training, roughly comparable to the Iranian Shahed-136 (known in Russia as the “Geran-2”). The number and cost of these drones have not been disclosed, but deliveries reportedly number in the hundreds under the tenure of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, well after Boris Johnson left Downing Street.