Boris Johnson was chosen as Tory party leader on July 23, 2019, setting him up to be the next British prime minister | Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images Double Boris: EU health commissioner compares Johnson to Yeltsin Lithuanian writes blog post about ’empty and broken promises.’

The European commissioner for health likened the next British prime minister to another Boris, Yeltsin and other politicians in post-Soviet Russia.

In a blog post published just before Boris Johnson was named the new leader of the Conservative Party, Vytenis Andriukaitis wrote: "Without comparing the UK itself with the USSR because it is not comparable, I can’t think of a better golden standard than the USSR in terms of fact distortion, reality falsification and blunt oblivions of reality."

The Lithuanian commissioner said the "heroes of the perestroika era" swore that they would "create a market economy in post-Soviet Russia within 500 days!" but this "never became a reality. People paid for these empty and broken promises with impoverishment, inequality and much more. The programme also left one infamous quote: ‘Boris, ti ne prav’ (‘Boris, you are wrong’)!"

He added: "It is a different Boris, of course, but there was something in the way of doing politics that was similar: many unrealistic promises, ignoring economic rationales and rational decisions. These decisions led to a new autocratic constitution and finally paved the way to Vladimir Putin. Today in Russia we have oligarchs, a pseudo-market economy, a regulated, governed pseudo-democracy. And Putin’s authoritarianism. For Boris Yeltsin, the warning came true: 'Boris, you are wrong.' Hopefully, it will not be the case for Boris Johnson if he is elected today."

Shortly after, Johnson won 66 percent of the votes in the Tory leadership race, and will British become prime minister on Wednesday.

Andriukaitis said he "can only wish him luck in ‘taking back control,’ spending more money on the NHS, swiftly concluding new trade agreements. In other words, I hope and wish that he does not give anyone a reason to use the quote ‘Boris, you are wrong’ against him."

The European commissioner has also sparred with Johnson's rival for the Tory leadership, Jeremy Hunt. At the Conservative Party conference in October last year, Hunt infuriated many in Brussels by likening the EU's tactics in the Brexit negotiations to those used by the USSR. In Tuesday's blog post, the European commissioner said he and Hunt had worked together when the latter was U.K. health secretary and he "found him very much aware of the negative consequences of Brexit in the UK for the NHS ... He seemed to have a good knowledge of the EU's internal mechanisms and the fundamental principles of the negotiations."

The Lithuanian, a former national health minister who was born in a Soviet gulag after his parents were deported to Siberia on Joseph Stalin's orders, said it "came as a big surprise" when Hunt compared the EU to the Soviet Union. "What was it? Ignorance of the essence of the EU? Lack of knowledge? A desperate attempt to appease Brexiteers? ... Having spent some time of my life in the Soviet exile, I couldn’t help but offer to discuss the differences with him. Unfortunately, Jeremy Hunt did not reply to my call for lack of interest or otherwise."