2024-09-29 09:15:30
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson considered carrying out a “water raid” on a warehouse in the Netherlands to take a large quantity of COVID-19 vaccines amid a row with Europe, PA Media/DPA reported, citing an excerpt from the memoir. his.
In March 2021, Johnson convened a meeting of senior military officials to discuss the plans, which he himself admitted were “crazy,” according to an excerpt from his book “Unleashed,” published in the Daily Mail newspaper, BTA reported.
At the time, AstraZeneca’s vaccine was at the heart of a cross-Channel dispute over exports, with the EU delaying deliveries of the drug to the UK.
According to the memoir, Deputy Chairman of the National Defense Staff Lt. Gen. Doug Chalmers told the prime minister that the plan was “certainly feasible” using inflatable boats to cross the Dutch canals.
“They would then rendezvous at the target, come in, pick up the wanted goods, drive off in a lorry and make their way to the English Channel ports,” Johnson wrote.
But a senior officer said it would not be possible for the operation to remain undisclosed because of the lockdown, authorities would be monitoring the raid, and then “we would be explaining to each other why we actually invaded a long-standing NATO ally”.
In his book, Johnson writes that he ordered an investigation “whether it is technically possible to launch an attack by sea on a warehouse in the Dutch city of Leiden, to take what is rightfully ours and which Britain desperately needs”.
“Of course I knew he was right, I secretly agreed with what they were all thinking, but I didn’t want to say out loud that the whole thing was crazy,” admits the former prime minister.
At the same time, according to him, the EU treated Britain maliciously “and did it in spite of”. “They wanted to stop us from five million doses, and at the same time they gave no indication that they wanted the AstraZeneca doses for themselves,” Johnson wrote. According to him, at that time “suddenly, the European Commission started a legal war against AstraZeneca on the grounds that the company does not comply with its contracts with the EU”.