Johnson compares Putin to former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday compared Russian President Vladimir Putin to the late former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who died in his cell in 2006 before his trial before an international court on charges of genocide and war crimes ended.
“There is a strong similarity between Putin’s behavior and the last years of Slobodan Milosevic,” Johnson said in an interview with the Italian newspapers “La Repubblica”, the Spanish “El Pais” and the German “Die Welt”.
“The two leaders have been in power for a long time, both are increasingly authoritarian and are seeking to establish themselves in their country, and they have found a great national cause,” he explained.
Johnson pointed out that Milosevic promoted nationalism and the need to “rescue” his people to justify the repression against Kosovar Albanians, saying that there is “a very strong kind of similarity between this disastrous mistake and what the Russian president said about Kyiv and about the origins of Russian religion, culture and civilization and its goals in Ukraine.”