Dans un discours prononcé depuis la Maison de l’Ukraine à Davos (Suisse), où se déroule le forum économique mondial, l’ancien Premier ministre britannique Boris Johnson a comparé le dirigeant russe Vladimir Poutine au personnage du « gros garçon », présent dans le roman Les Papiers posthumes du Pickwick Club de Charles Dickens.
« [Poutine] wants to portray the situation as a nuclear stalemate between NATO and Russia. It’s absurd ! He’s not going to use nuclear weapons. He’s like the fat boy in Dickens, he wants to give us goosebumps, he wants us to think about it, (but) he never will, Johnson believes. First, because we would put it into complete economic paralysis. Then he would lose all common ground with all the states that are currently giving him the benefit of the doubt. »
He was speaking at an event also attended by the US President’s special climate envoy, John Kerry.