Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson pilloried Vladimir Putin following the Russian’s 81,000-200,000-strong rally celebrating eight years since the annexation of Crimea.
Johnson’s speech on Saturday was delivered to a much smaller crowd at the Conservative Party’s spring conference in Blackpool and consisted of a cutting attack on President Putin, suggesting that the Russian is in a “total panic” about a political revolution against his rule.
“He has been in a total panic about a so-called colour revolution in Moscow itself and that is why he is trying so brutally to snuff out the flame of freedom in Ukraine and that’s why it is so vital that he fails,” Johnson alleged.
Citing political oppression in the Russian Federation, Johson asserted that “in Putin’s Russia you get jailed for 15 years just for calling an invasion an invasion, and if you stand against Putin in an election you get poisoned or shot” — a reference to Russian opposition leader Alexander Navalny.
Johnson even compared Putin to a drug dealer, saying that he is a “backstreet pusher, feeding addiction, creating dependence” on Russian oil and gas which has fuelled Europe’s cost of living crisis, The Telegraph reports.
The British Prime Minister insisted that Putin had orchestrated the attack on Ukraine not just to expand his territory but also to disrupt the West.
“Putin’s war is intended to cause economic damage to the West and to benefit him, he knows that with every dollar increase in the price of a barrel of oil, he gets billions more in revenues from the sales of either oil and gas, and that’s the tragedy of the situation,” Johnson alleged.
“Putin wants to weaken to weaken the collective will to resist by pushing up the cost of living. Hitting us at the pumps and in our fuel bills”, he continued.
“It is time to take back control of our energy supplies”, the Prime Minister said — perhaps a subtle hint that he will finally begin moving away from ‘green’ policies which have prevented the development of fracking, new oil and gas fields, and mines under his administration.
Johnson concluded his speech by claiming “it’s the Conservatives who stand up for freedom and against the blackmail of Putin because we know that it’s only by sticking up for freedom that we can deliver long term prosperity and security” — rhetoric likely to irk lockdown sceptics and others who objected to the way his government deprived Britons of their freedoms during the coronavirus pandemic, with rulebreakers fined and sometimes arrested.
The Prime Minister’s statements on standing up for freedom and against oppression also appear to be contradicted by his having just returned from a meeting with the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia to try and beg for an increase in oil production, considering the Islamic kingdom is renowned for human rights atrocities including regularly beheading individuals on charges of “witchcraft and sorcery” and a brutal war in Yemen, conducted in part with arms sold to the Saudi regime by Britain.
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