West must show Putin that 'Russia is no longer an empire,' Boris Johnson says

The West must get it across to Vladimir Putin that Russia is no longer an empire, former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in an online interview with Delfi published on Jan. 10, calling the Russian leader a "f***ing idiot."

Johnson made a parallel to the British Empire, saying that though almost nothing is left of the once-greatest empire in the world, the U.K. is content in its post-imperialist role.

Talking in the context of Russia's war against Ukraine, the ex-prime minister called for Ukraine's accession to NATO and criticized the alliance's "chronically ambiguous" approach toward Kyiv.

In office between 2019 and 2022, Johnson was one of the staunchest supporters of Ukraine at the onset of the full-scale invasion, visiting the country several times during the war.

The former head of the British government told the Baltic news outlet that Russia's war is "archaic and barbaric" and that Moscow needs to learn that Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and other countries are also not part of the Russian empire anymore.

As Russia's full-scale invasion nears its third anniversary, Russian forces continue to occupy roughly 20% of Ukraine's sovereign territory. Moscow illegally declared the annexation of four partially occupied regions in September 2022, in addition to Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula seized in 2014.

‘Russian colonialism is not reformable,’ says historian Botakoz Kassymbekova

Most Russians seem unwilling to give up the privileges the government gives them at the expense of the country’s ethnic minorities, says Botakoz Kassymbekova, a historian focusing on Eastern Europe at the University of Zurich. “Russian colonialism is not reformable,” she says. “Russian dissidents…

The Kyiv IndependentDinara Khalilova