British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in an interview on Friday said he saw a "close analogy" between Russian President Vladimir Putin and late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, who was charged with war crimes.
Johnson told journalists from Italy's La Repubblica, Spain's El Pais and Germany's Die Welt that he saw links "between Putin's behaviour and the last years of Slobodan Milosevic".
The late Serbian president was charged with war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo during the break-up of Yugoslavia and died in a United Nations court cell in 2006 before the end of his trial.
Johnson said that Milosevic invoked ideas about Kosovo being the birthplace of the nation to justify a brutal crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in the late 1990s, and "inspired his people with this misbegotten idea that it needed to be rescued and liberated".
"There's a very close sort of analogy between that catastrophic mistake, and what the President of Russia has been saying about Kiev and the origins of Russian religion and culture and civilisation and his objectives in Ukraine," Johnson said.
Modern-day Russia and Ukraine both trace their roots to the medieval state of Kievan Rus and Putin has claimed this means "Russians and Ukrainians are one people".
Johnson described both Putin and Milosevic as "increasingly autocratic" and "seeking to shore up their domestic position and found a great nationalist cause".
The International Criminal Court has started an active probe into possible war crimes in Ukraine.
Johnson on Thursday said Putin was "guilty of a war crime" after civilians were bombed in Ukraine, echoing an earlier accusation by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Asked if the West should try to put Putin in front of an international court, Johnson said Friday that "when it comes to the International Criminal Court, that's a matter for them".
"If there is evidence of the use of illegal munitions, cluster bombs, barrel weapons, this clearly will have to be brought (to the) Netherlands".
