Did Great Britain threaten to use nuclear weapons against Russia during the 2022 Russia-Ukraine conflict? No, that's not true: A spokesperson at the press office of No. 10 Downing Street in London -- the office of U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson -- told Lead Stories that the claim was not true at the time of writing.
The claim, which may have originated on the Russian media website Pravda, reappeared in a Facebook post on April 24, 2022. The caption of the video reads:
BREAKING! Britain Threatens to Nuke Russia
Although the first 45 seconds of the video are unrelated to the claim, the narrator of the video begins to discuss the claim at the 0:46 mark.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Apr 26 14:37 2022 UTC)
The narrator of the video, who referred to themselves as "Yaku," did not verbally cite any specific source for the claim. However, the imagery used in the section related to that claim was of an article titled "Britain threatens to use non-NATO nuclear weapons - Russia identifies SAS forces in Ukraine: 'Your island is the No. 1 target.'" The article was attributed to the Greek website WarNews247. A search for the article on WarNews247 website did not generate any results at the time of writing. The article shown in the background of the video cited "Russia media" without specifying what media outlet.
During a phone call with Lead Stories on April 26, 2022, a spokesperson at the No. 10 Downing Street press office said that the claim that Great Britain was threatening to use nuclear weapons against Russia is not true. The spokesperson also said that a quote attributed to Johnson in the Pravda article about "weapons of mass destruction" was not true.
Lead Stories used Google search results to find more information about the claim. Searches for "Britain threatens to nuke Russia," "Britain Russia nuclear weapons," "United Kingdom Russia threat" and "Boris Johnson threatens Russia" did not generate credible results that corroborated the claim made in the Facebook post.
Other Lead Stories fact checks related to the 2022 Russia-Ukraine conflict can be found here.
