Leader of Bosnian Serbs and a member of the tripartite Presidency of Bosnia, Milorad Dodik, described Ukraine's armed forces as "an armed gang" on Wednesday, echoing the exact same rhetoric used by Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, before ordering the invasion on Ukraine.

In a statement which he gave to state media from the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska (RS) entity, Dodik, a staunch ally of Putin, also condemned British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s speech from Tuesday in which he compared the modern-day shelling of the major city of Kharkiv in Ukraine with the shelling of Bosnia’s capital Sarajevo during its siege by Bosnian Serb forces from 1992 to 1995. Johnson was speaking at the Tapa military base in Estonia.

“Johnson was right (to compare Kharkiv and Sarajevo) only if he was referring to armed gangs like the ones walking around Kyiv today, which can be seen on social networks,” Dodik said on Wednesday. Ignoring the fact that more than 11,000 Sarajevans were killed by Bosnian Serb snipers and shelling during the brutal three-and-a-half-year siege of the Bosnian capital, Dodik called the city a “huge concentration camp for Serbs.”

“I don’t know how the British Prime Minister failed to remember (mentioning) Republika Srpska and Serbia, which they had bombed for months without any legal basis or any reason,” Dodik said, in reference to Nato’s Operation Deliberate Force in late 1995 which bombed Bosnian Serb forces, and Operation Allied Force in 1999 in present-day Serbia and Montenegro during the Kosovo War.