Vladimir Putin speaking in Moscow (Picture: AP)
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is ‘going to plan’ Vladimir Putin claimed yesterday, as he warned the West is playing a ‘dangerous, dirty and deadly game’.
The Russian president said he had no need to use nuclear weapons but repeated claims that Ukraine plans to detonate a radioactive ‘dirty bomb’.
Speaking in Moscow, he said the world was facing its most dangerous decade since World War II. ‘In the modern world it will not be possible to sit it out,’ he said. ‘He who sows the wind will reap a storm.’
In a rambling speech he said, where nuclear weapons exist, ‘there is always the chance of them being used’, but accused the UK of raising tensions during this summer’s Tory leadership election. ‘Liz Truss said it directly that the UK is a nuclear power and the British prime minister has it in her mandate to use them, and she said she was prepared to do it,’ he said. ‘She made a mistake, and she was a bit out of it, but someone should have corrected it.’
He claimed the West was interfering in a Russian ‘civil war’ and trying to impose a financial and cultural dominance. ‘The West has the right to dozens of genders and gay parades but they don’t have the right to demand others follow,’ he said.
Putin said little about the war but insisted the ‘main thing’ was to secure the annexed territory of Donbas. Ex-Ukrainian minister Anton Gerashchenko called the speech a ‘boring repetition of old tunes’. UK foreign secretary James Cleverly said it was ‘unclear, untrue and unedifying’.
These Russians are crazy, says bewildered Zelensky
Volodymyr Zelensky says Russian generals are ‘driving people to their death’ (Picture: Ukrainian President Press Office/UPI/Shutterstock)
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has called Russia’s generals ‘crazy’ over their repeated failed bids to capture a small eastern town.
Troops have been trying to take Bakhmut for months and the attacks continue despite a looming Ukrainian advance in Kherson. One morning the Russians launched eight separate attacks before lunch and were pushed back each time, the president’s office said.
Mr Zelensky added: ‘That is where the craziness of the Russian command is most visible: day after day for months, they are driving people there to their death.’
He thanked the country’s power workers for maintaining the electricity supply as Russia continues to target energy infrastructure before winter.
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He also repeated claims that Ukraine plans to detonate a radioactive ‘dirty bomb’.