Boris Johnson compares Ukrainian resistance to Brexit and it does not pass

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UNITED KINGDOM – A parallel that does not pass. During a speech to the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool, northern England, Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson compared this Saturday, March 19, the Ukrainian resistance against the russian invasion to Brexitcausing outrage.

In front of the Ukrainian ambassador in London, Vadym Prystaiko, Boris Johnson declared that the time had come to “choose between freedom and oppression”, before estimating that it would be a “mistake” to “try to normalize relations with Vladimir Poutine after that, like we did in 2014”.

For Boris Johnson, if Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, it was because he felt threatened by freedom and democracy. “Because in Putin’s Russia you are imprisoned for 15 years just for calling an invasion an invasion, and if you oppose Putin in an election you are poisoned or shot,” he said. continued, believing that the Russian president was “totally panicked” at the idea of ​​a revolution in Moscow.

The British prime minister, in turmoil over his ties to a Russian billionaire, also launched into a comparison between Ukrainian resistance to Russia and Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.

“I know it’s in the instinct of the people [britannique]like that of the Ukrainian people, to choose freedom every time”, he said during the congress of the Conservative Party, reports Politico. Going further, he added that “when so many Brits voted for Brexit I think they weren’t hostile to foreigners at all. […]. It’s because they wanted to be free to do things differently and for this country to govern itself”.

“An absolute disgrace”

This parallel between Brexit and the war in Ukraine immediately outraged commentators. For Northern Irish journalist Neil Mackay, “comparing Ukraine’s fight for survival to Brexit is a shame,” he tweeted.

Presenter at the LBC radio station, James Oh Brien did not mince his words against the Prime Minister either. “It’s been obvious for a long time that Boris Johnson doesn’t possess the slightest ounce of decency, but I’m still shocked at times at the depth of his decadence,” he tweeted, calling the Prime Minister’s remarks ‘“insult” to “almost all Ukrainians” who want to join the European Union.

“The PM of Great Britain has just compared the current desire of the Ukrainian people to be free to the British vote for Brexit. An absolute shame,” reacted journalist Alex Taylor.

Expressing his incomprehension with regard to the comparison made by the head of the British government, the journalist from Times Iain Martin wonders for his part why in “this extraordinary moment of national unity in support of Ukraine”, the conservative leader chose “unnecessarily to reintroduce division”.

See also on The HuffPost: Johnson apologizes for Downing Street party amid lockdown


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