BORIS Johnson addressed the citizens of Russia in their language in a video on Twitter, about the actions that their Government has been taking against Ukraine.
The UK Prime Minister is known to be multilingual, but can he fluently speak Russian too?
Does Boris Johnson speak Russian?
Boris Johnson is the first UK Prime Minister to be born outside of Britain.
He was born in New York as his father was studying at Columbia University at the time.
His father then worked at the European Commission in Brussels and during his upbringing, Boris was sent to a multilingual school.
But he did not learn Russian here.
He managed to speak some Russian in the video that addressed Russian citizens but Boris cannot speak fluent Russian.
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In the video, Boris encouraged the Russian people to bypass Kremlin internet censors and learn the truth about the war crimes in Ukraine.
When did Boris Johnson learn Russian?
Boris Johnson did not learn Russian in school, and for the video, he probably learnt the lines beforehand.
One must consider the fact though, that being a Prime Minister does expose him to foreign affairs.
Some documents which he might come across might be in another country’s first language and considering the relations that the UK and Russia used to have, Boris might pick up on Russian before.
Because of the relations both countries have, London became known as Londongrad.
Many Russians sought to invest their money in the UK after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Many Russian businessmen chose to invest their assets in English companies too, for example, Roman Abramovich became Chelsea FC‘s owner.
How many languages does Boris Johnson speak?
In total, it can be said that Boris Johnson speaks six languages.
Boris attended the European School of Uccle where he learnt fluent French.
He then attended boarding school in East Sussex, the Ashdown House.
Here he studied Ancient Greek and Latin.
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These languages enabled him to work as the Telegraph’s Brussels bureau correspondent in Belgium and during his time at Eton and Oxford, he had a go at journalism running a satirical magazine.
He claims that he has a grasp of Italian too, and from what we saw in the video above, he also has a grasp of Russian now too.
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