Category Archives: Putin

If Putin were to restore to nuclear arms, the MI6 veteran claimed, "radioactive contamination would spread to Russian land".

That, he suggested, might be reason enough to prevent such an escalation.

Sir John's reference to the natural damage brought by the use of weapons echoes claims by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday about the environmental price of Russia's war.

He told an audience at the Globsec security conference in Bratislava that the military's conflict isn't just a human horror, but an ecological disaster, too.

Speaking via video link, Mr Zelensky said: "Let us again remember the significance of the Danube river, this is the source of prosperity for various cities: Bratislava, Vienna, Budapest.

"To make sure the Danube remains clean and safe to ensure that its economic potential, including transport potential, is in full swing, we need cooperation from all countries which have received this great gift of nature."

Ukraine LIVE:Sending your soldiers to die! Putin faces mutiny

The Danube River runs through Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, Moldova, Bulgaria and Romania, along with Ukraine.

Mr Zelensky continued: "The pollutants can contaminate not only the rivers of Ukraine but also the Black and Azov Seas.

"The threats to the entire humanity is just impossible to be organised in a comprehensive way without being cognisant of what is taking place on water."

Sir John, who headed the MI6 between 2009 and 2014, dubbed the invasion of Ukraine "the most dangerous crisis since the Cold War".

While acknowledging the threats of Russia's "military power", which include "a huge nuclear arsenal", the former intelligence head said the chances of Putin triggering a nuclear escalation had decreased considerably since the conflict began.

His predictions are in line with those of top NATO and US officials who say the war is likely to end at the negotiating table but stress the need for Kyiv to be able to defend itself to strengthen its position at peace talks.

At a joint news conference in Washington on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said how the fighting evolves will impact any future negotiations.

Mr Stoltenberg told reporters: "Wars are unpredictable.

"We were able to predict the invasion, but how this war will evolve, it's very hard to predict.

"What we do know is that almost all wars end at some stage at the negotiating table."

Mr Blinken said: "We can't say when, we can't say exactly how.

"What we can say is what we will do to make sure that Ukraine has the means to defend itself and has the strongest possible hand at every step along the way."

The full-scale Russian invasion, which is hitting the 100-day mark on Friday, was launched by Vladimir Putin on February 24.

It has led to the deaths of thousands of people, devastated cities and towns and triggered a massive exodus of more than six million Ukrainians.

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Putin warned: 'Radioactive contamination would spread to Russian land' - Express

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Ukraine's Kharkiv region over the weekend, calling the situation there "indescribably difficult." Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP hide caption

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Ukraine's Kharkiv region over the weekend, calling the situation there "indescribably difficult."

Two European leaders over the weekend urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to end his country's hostilities in Ukraine and return to the negotiating table as the war nears the 100-day mark.

In a Saturday phone call, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke with Putin, asking him to hold "direct" and "serious" talks with his Ukrainian counterpart, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, according to releases from the offices of Macron and Scholz.

In a statement, the Kremlin said Russia "is open to renewing dialogue with Kyiv." But Putin also warned Macron and Scholz against further arms supplies to Ukraine, it said, suggesting that continuing to provide weapons could risk "further destabilization of the situation." And the Kremlin said any move to allow the export of grain from Ukraine's ports which have been blocked by Russian warships should be answered by the lifting of what the Kremlin called "relevant sanctions."

Negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv have been frozen for weeks. Ukrainian officials responded skeptically to the development.

"Any agreements with Russia aren't worth a penny. Is it possible to negotiate with a country that always cynically and propagandistically lies?" wrote Mykhailo Podolyak, a presidential adviser and member of Ukraine's negotiation team, on Telegram Saturday. "A barbarian can only be stopped by force."

Sunday marks the 95th day of Russia's invasion. Russia has refocused its efforts on eastern Ukraine, where fighting is now centered on Severodonetsk, the last major city in the Luhansk oblast controlled by Ukraine.

Russian forces are working to encircle the city, according to Ukrainian military officials the same tactic Russia used against Mariupol and Chernihiv, and attempted against Kyiv. Military analysts and Ukrainians in the region report that the fighting has been brutal for both sides.

Saturday's call to Putin by Macron and Scholz comes as Europe is dividing over whether to take a hard line against Russia or to encourage Ukraine to pursue a cease-fire.

An EU summit about the conflict is set to begin Monday. But the member states have disagreed about whether to intensify sanctions against Russia or instead encourage peace talks, according to Reuters.

Any peace talks would likely include discussion of ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia something Ukraine has steadfastly said it will refuse to do.

"If the occupiers think that Lyman or Severodonetsk will be theirs, they are wrong. Donbas will be Ukrainian," Zelenskyy said in an overnight address.

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy traveled outside Kyiv over the weekend to visit frontline forces near Kharkiv.

While Ukraine has claimed victory in the city of Kharkiv, some nearby areas are still under relentless attack. About a third of the Kharkiv region is still controlled by Russian troops, Ukrainian officials say.

The fighting and destruction there is "indescribably difficult," Zelenskyy said. Authorities say more than 2,000 multi-story apartment blocks have been destroyed in the area.

"Destruction is significant, but we have a vision of ways to rebuild the area, and we are already working with potential investors to finance housing, public buildings and infrastructure recovery. First, we need to ensure that housing stock is rebuilt so people can come back and business can resume," said Oleh Synyehubov, the head of Kharkiv's regional military administration.

The Ukrainian military says it has launched a counteroffensive in the south aimed at recapturing the port city of Kherson.

"There is more and more information that the occupiers are trying to limit the departure of our people from the temporarily occupied areas of the Kherson region. They do not provide any humanitarian corridors. And they have closed the individual departure of people," Zelenskyy said Saturday night.

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Ahead of this week's EU summit, France and Germany urge Putin to meet Zelenskyy - NPR

WASHINGTON The old nuclear order, rooted in the Cold Wars unthinkable outcomes, was fraying before Russia invaded Ukraine. Now, it is giving way to a looming era of disorder unlike any since the beginning of the atomic age.

Russias regular reminders over the past three months of its nuclear might, even if largely bluster, were the latest evidence of how the potential threat has resurfaced in more overt and dangerous ways. They were enough to draw a pointed warning to Moscow on Tuesday from President Biden in what amounted to a tacit acknowledgment that the world had entered a period of heightened nuclear risks.

We currently see no indication that Russia has intent to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, though Russias occasional rhetoric to rattle the nuclear saber is itself dangerous and extremely irresponsible, Mr. Biden wrote in a guest opinion essay in The New York Times. Let me be clear: Any use of nuclear weapons in this conflict on any scale would be completely unacceptable to us as well as the rest of the world and would entail severe consequences.

Those consequences, though, would almost certainly be nonnuclear, officials said a sharp contrast to the kind of threats of nuclear escalation that Washington and Moscow pursued during the Cold War.

Such shifts extend well beyond Russia and include Chinas moves to expand its arsenal, the collapse of any hope that North Korea will limit much less abandon its cache of nuclear warheads and the emergence of so-called threshold states, like Iran, which are tantalizingly close to being able to build a bomb.

During the Trump administration, the United States and Russia pulled out of arms treaties that had constrained their arsenals. Only one New START, which limits both sides to 1,550 deployed strategic weapons was left in place. Then, as the Ukraine war started in February, talks between Washington and Moscow on what might replace the agreement ended abruptly.

With the Biden administration stepping up the flow of conventional weapons to Ukraine and tensions with Russia high, a senior administration official conceded that right now its almost impossible to imagine how the talks might resume before the last treaty expires in early 2026.

Last summer, hundreds of new missile silos began appearing in the Chinese desert. The Pentagon declared that Beijing, which had long said it needed only a minimum deterrent, was moving to build an arsenal of at least 1,000 nuclear arms by 2030.

The commander of United States Strategic Command, the military unit that keeps the nuclear arsenal ready to launch, said last month that he was worried Beijing was learning lessons from Moscows threats over Ukraine and would apply them to Taiwan, which it similarly views as a breakaway state.

The Chinese are watching the war in Ukraine closely and will likely use nuclear coercion to their advantage in future conflicts, the commander, Adm. Charles A. Richard, told Congress. Beijings aim, he said, is to achieve the military capability to reunify Taiwan by 2027, if not sooner.

Other administration officials are more skeptical, noting that Russias saber rattling failed to deter the West from arming Ukraine and that the lesson China may take away is that nuclear threats can backfire.

Others are learning their own lessons. North Korea, which President Donald J. Trump boasted he would disarm with one-on-one diplomacy, is building new weapons.

South Korea, which Mr. Biden visited last month, is once again openly debating whether to build a nuclear force to counter the North, a discussion reminiscent of the 1970s, when Washington forced the South to give up a covert bomb program.

In South Korea and beyond, Ukraines renunciation of its nuclear arsenal three decades ago is seen by some as a mistake that left it open to invasion.

Iran has rebuilt much of its nuclear infrastructure since President Donald J. Trump abandoned the 2015 nuclear agreements. Reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency suggest that Tehran can now produce the fuel for a nuclear weapon in weeks, though the warhead would take a year or more.

What is fast approaching, experts say, is a second nuclear age full of new dangers and uncertainties, less predictable than during the Cold War, with established restraints giving way to more naked threats to reach for such weapons and a need for new strategies to keep the atomic peace.

Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, argued recently in Foreign Affairs that the dawning era would feature both a greater risk of a nuclear arms race and heightened incentives for states to resort to nuclear weapons in a crisis.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia opened the Ukraine war with a declaration that he was putting his nuclear abilities on some kind of heightened alert a clear message to Washington to back off. (There is no evidence that he moved any nuclear weapons or loosened the controls on their use, William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, said recently.)

It was the latest expression of a Putin strategy to remind the world that even if Russias economy is about the size of Italys and its influence is eclipsed by Chinas rise, its nuclear arsenal remains the largest.

June 1, 2022, 7:28 p.m. ET

In the years leading up to the Ukraine invasion, Mr. Putin regularly punctuated his speeches with nuclear propaganda videos, including one that showed a swarm of warheads descending on Florida. In March 2018, when he announced the development of a 78-foot-long, nuclear-armed torpedo meant to cross an ocean and blanket an area larger than California with radioactivity, he called it amazing and really fantastic as an accompanying video showed it exploding in a gargantuan fireball.

A popular Sunday news show in Russia recently featured an animation that again showcased the giant torpedo, claiming the weapon could explode with a force of up to 100 megatons more than 6,000 times as powerful as the American atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima and turn Britain into a radioactive desert.

It was all a little heavy-handed, even for a bruised Mr. Putin. But inside the Pentagon and the National Security Council, his bluster has focused attention on another part of the Russian arsenal: tactical or battlefield weapons, relatively small arms that are not covered by any treaty and are easy to transport. Russia possesses a stockpile of 2,000 or so, 20 times more than NATOs arsenals.

They are designed by the Russians to blur the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons, which strategists fear makes their use more thinkable.

In war games and field exercises, Russian troops have simulated the transition from conventional to tactical nuclear weapons as an experiment in scaring off adversaries. In Russian military doctrine, this is called escalate to de-escalate.

A sign of the risks of this new age has been a series of urgent meetings in the administration to map out how Mr. Biden should respond if Russia conducts a nuclear detonation in Ukraine or around the Black Sea. Officials will not discuss the classified results of those tabletop exercises.

But in public testimony to Congress last month, Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, said that officials believed Mr. Putin would reach for his arsenal only if he perceives that he is losing the war in Ukraine, and that NATO in effect is either intervening or about to intervene.

Intelligence officials say they think the chances are low, but that is higher than what anyone was projecting before the invasion.

There are a lot of things that he would do in the context of escalation before he would get to nuclear weapons, Ms. Haines said.

Military aid. The United States said it will send Ukraine advanced rocketsas part of a new $700 million aid package, while Germany promised a modern air-defense system. The buttressing of Ukraines weaponry underscores Western resolve to hobble Russias war effort at a critical time.

On the ground. Russian troops have stormed the city of Sievierodonetskin Ukraines east and converged in the city center, according to a local official. The fall of Sievierodonetsk would give President Vladimir V. Putins forces the last major city in the Luhansk province still in Ukrainian hands.

Russian oil embargo. European Union members finally reached an agreement on a Russian oil embargoand new sanctions against Russia. The long-delayed deal effectively exempts Hungary, which had opposed the embargo, from the costly step the rest of the bloc is taking to punish Russia.

The White House, the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies are examining the implications of any potential Russian claim that it is conducting a nuclear test or the use by its forces of a relatively small, battlefield nuclear weapon to demonstrate its ability.

As Mr. Bidens opinion article hinted, his advisers are quietly looking almost entirely at nonnuclear responses most likely a combination of sanctions, diplomatic efforts and, if a military response is needed, conventional strikes to any such demonstration of nuclear detonation.

The idea would be to signal immediate de-escalation followed by international condemnation, said one administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide insight into classified topics.

If you respond in kind, you lose the moral high ground and the ability to harness a global coalition, said Jon B. Wolfsthal, a nuclear expert who was on the National Security Council during the Obama administration.

Mr. Wolfsthal noted that in 2016, the Obama administration ran a war game in which participants agreed that a nonnuclear response to a Russian strike was the best option. Ms. Haines, then President Barack Obamas deputy national security adviser, ran the simulation.

Scott D. Sagan, a specialist in nuclear strategy at Stanford Universitys Center for International Security and Cooperation, called the development of a nonnuclear response an extremely important development.

The response need not be a response in kind, he said.

But details matter. A test by Russia over the ocean, where no one dies, might be one thing; one in a Ukrainian city that kills people might result in a different response.

Henry Kissinger noted in a recent interview with The Financial Times that theres almost no discussion internationally about what would happen if the weapons actually became used. He added: We are now living in a totally new era.

For decades, Beijing was satisfied with having a few hundred nuclear weapons to assure that it could not be attacked and that it would retain a second strike ability in case nuclear weapons were used against it.

When satellite images began showing new intercontinental ballistic missile silos being dug on the edge of the Gobi Desert last year, it set off a debate in the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies about what Chinas leader, Xi Jinping, intended, especially at a time when he appeared to be steering toward a confrontation over Taiwan.

The simplest theory is that if China is going to be a superpower, it needs a superpower-sized arsenal. But another is that Beijing recognizes that all the familiar theories of nuclear balance of power are eroding.

China is heralding a paradigm shift to something much less stable, Mr. Krepinevich wrote, a tripolar nuclear system.

Administration officials say that every time the subject is raised, their Chinese counterparts make clear they will not discuss entering arms control agreements. As a result, they are unclear about Mr. Xis intentions. For example, might China extend the protection of its nuclear arsenal over other states it is trying to lure into its orbit?

All this is the subject of a classified study that the Pentagon recently sent to Congress. But so far, none of it has been openly debated.

Everybodys scurrying for a nuclear umbrella and, if they cant get that, thinking about getting their own weapons, said David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that tracks the spread of nuclear arms.

He called the Middle East prime territory for further atomic ambitions. As Iran has inched toward a bomb, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have talked publicly about the possibility of matching whatever Tehran does.

Theyre up to something, Mr. Albright said of Saudi Arabia, and theyre rich.

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Putins Threats Highlight the Dangers of a New, Riskier Nuclear Era - The New York Times

One way to think yourself into the warped mind of a despot like Russian President Vladimir Putin is to first probe into the dark recesses of your own psyche, then figure out what's different in his. The list is long, but one cognitive snafu that's both common and relevant is called deformation professionelle.

We use the French term not only because that language often captures things better, but also because the phrase has an embedded pun that doesn't translate into the English "professional deformation." Formation professionelle means vocational training. Deformation professionelle therefore refers to the tunnel vision, biases and distortions we imbibe as we become expert at whatever we do.

Many prosecutors, for example, will walk down a random street and, looking left and right, see people who are guilty of something, just not yet caught. Defense attorneys strolling on the same sidewalk will look around and behold human beings who are unjustly accused of something or other, and probably harassed by an overbearing inquisition.

Usually, deformation professionelle is all around us, but no more than a nuisance. It applies to the professor who comes home at night and annoyingly stays in lecture mode with the spouse and kids. Or the tech guy at your company who - left to his own devices and in the name of cybersecurity - would make logging on to your computer so difficult that you'll never do a jot of work again.

In the context of geopolitics generally, and the Russian attack on Ukraine specifically, the stakes are, of course, immeasurably higher. Putin suffered his deformation professionelle in the KGB, the spy agency of the former Soviet Union. He worked there from 1975, when he was in his twenties, until just before the USSR collapsed. To this day, he likes to emphasize that there's no such thing as a "former" KGB agent - people may have left the agency, but it never left them.

Long before becoming leader of a nuclear power, therefore, he built an identity and personality as a spook. Ponder this. He didn't rise to power after running for office, shaking hands and kissing babies; nor after managing a business, curing patients, researching mRNA or selling widgets. Putin got into pole position to be the Kremlin's alpha male by spying on human beings, as well as tracking, manipulating and often discarding them.

What did that do to Putin's mind as we encounter it today? Ruediger von Fritsch, a former German ambassador to Russia, describes the psychological consequences as he observed them. Putin sorts everything in life - private or public, Russian or global - into categories of actual or potential hostilities, conspiracies or threats.

Ivan Krastev, a Bulgarian political scientist, concurs, saying, "He is constantly speaking of betrayal and deceit." As Putin sees history and current events, Krastev says, "Things never happen spontaneously. If people demonstrate, he doesn't ask: Why are they out on the streets? He asks: Who sent them?"

Viewed thus, many of Putin's hallucinations become fathomable. The Soviet Union didn't fall; it was pushed (by a hostile West). The "color revolutions" in former Soviet Republics weren't primal yells for freedom by people who felt oppressed; those protesters were hired or manipulated by the CIA and other Western secret services. Ukrainians don't want to join the European Union for its promise of prosperity, progress and liberty; they're doing it because they're run by Nazis whose real objective is to encircle and betray Russia and Putin.

Another aspect of this particular deformation professionelle concerns truth - or rather, the complete absence and irrelevance of the very notion. For years, people like Peter Pomerantsev, a Soviet-born British author, have pointed out that Putin flaunts his power by defining "reality" as arbitrarily as he pleases.

The once-and-always KGB agent knows that "if nothing is true, then anything is possible," Pomerantsev reckons. "We are left with the sense that we don't know what Putin will do next - that he's unpredictable and thus dangerous. We're rendered stunned, spun, and flummoxed by the Kremlin's weaponization of absurdity and unreality."

While he was German ambassador to the Kremlin, von Fritsch experienced first-hand the cognitive whiplash this produces in others. "In some conversations in Moscow after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, I had the feeling that we invaded the peninsula rather than Russia." If there is no truth, it no longer matters whether you distort reality or invert it, as long as you can. In Putin's system, lying isn't a bug, it's a feature.

So what makes Putin different from the rest of us? A lot. First, while we may all suffer from some deformation professionelle (journalists are hardly immune), most of us aren't spies.

Second, biased as our worldviews may be, most of us still have to occasionally encounter and interact with other people, who have different perspectives. Putin, by contrast, appears to be completely isolated in his alternate reality.

And third, even when we go off the deep end, most of us don't have enough power to hurt millions of innocent bystanders (although the grieving people of Uvalde, Texas, know that a person acting alone can still destroy the lives of many). Putin does have that ultimate power, which comes with the codes to launch nukes.

His formative years in the KGB caused a deformation professionelle in Vladimir Putin that has left him cynical, paranoid, vengeful, unscrupulous and ruthless. And above all, mendacious. Ukraine, the West and the world must keep that in mind in calibrating a strategy against him.

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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Opinion: Putin Has "Professional Deformation". You Could Have It Too - NDTV

The decision of the Russian leadership to concentrate larger forces in eastern Ukraine to capture new territories creates conditions for intensified counterattacks by Ukrainian forces in Kherson region, where Russian troops are increasingly vulnerable.

Moscows concentration on seizing Severodonetsk and Donbas generally continues to create vulnerabilities for Russia in Ukraines vital Kherson Oblast, where Ukrainian counter-offensives continue, reads the latest Russian offensive campaign assessment by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

As noted, Kherson is critical terrain because it is the only area of Ukraine in which Russian forces hold ground on the west bank of the Dnipro River. If Russia is able to retain a strong lodgment in Kherson when fighting stops it will be in a very strong position from which to launch a future invasion.

If Ukraine regains Kherson, on the other hand, Ukraine will be in a much stronger position to defend itself against future Russian attack.

This strategic calculus should in principle lead Russia to allocate sufficient combat power to hold Kherson. But Russian President Vladimir Putin has chosen instead to concentrate all the forces and resources that can be scraped together in a desperate and bloody push to seize areas of eastern Ukraine that will give him largely symbolic gains, reads the report.

The ISW experts note that continuing successful Ukrainian counter-offensives in Kherson indicate that Ukraines commanders take advantage of the vulnerabilities that Putins decisions have created.

British intelligence also confirms these data. According to the latest report, although the occupiers conduct offensive operations in Donbas, they have to defend themselves in some areas.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine went on the offensive in Kharkiv and Kherson regions and achieved good results in these areas. They regained control of some of the occupied territories and advanced several kilometers toward the state border.

ol

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Putins focus on Donbas creates vulnerabilities in Kherson region ISW - Ukrinform

Legendary Brazilian soccer player Pele poses for a portrait during an interview in New York, U.S., April 26, 2016. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

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June 1 (Reuters) - Brazilian soccer legend Pele made a public plea on Wednesday to Russian President Vladimir Putin to end his "wicked" and "unjustifiable" invasion of Ukraine, minutes before Ukraine's national team played in a World Cup qualifying game.

"I want to use today's game as an opportunity to make a request: Stop this invasion. No argument exists that can justify violence," Pele said in a statement published on Instagram.

"This conflict is wicked, unjustifiable and brings nothing but pain, fear, terror and anguish."

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Pele and Putin last met in Moscow in 2017 during the Confederations Cup, a championship held before the World Cup. The Russian leader has named Pele as one of his favorite players.

"When we met in the past and exchanged smiles accompanied by a long handshake, I never thought one day we would be as divided as we are today," wrote Pele, who served as Brazil's first minister of sports in the 1990s.

Ukraine beat Scotland 3-1 on Wednesday to move one game away from qualifying for the World Cup.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy thanked the team for "two hours of happiness, something we have become unaccustomed to." read more

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Reporting by Brendan O'Boyle; editing by Richard Pullin

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Brazilian soccer icon Pele calls on Putin to stop 'wicked' Ukraine invasion - Reuters

Canada has imposed sanctions on Alina Kabaeva,reportedly the girlfriend of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The former Olympic gymnast is one of 22 close associates of the Russian regime added to the sanctions list over the country's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

The United Kingdom sanctioned Kabaeva earlier this month and her name was also reported to have appeared on a draft list of individuals who could be sanctioned by the European Union.

At the time, Foreign Affairs Minister Mlanie Joly would not rule out making a similar move, saying Canada wanted to be in lockstep with its allies on imposing sanctions on people with ties to Putin.

WATCH|Canada announces new round of sanctions against Putin's supporters:

"We need to suffocate the Putin regime. That's been our goal since the beginningand that's what we'll continue to do," Joly said Tuesday in a scrum with reporters.

She said that although Canada and its allies weren't imposing sanctions on the same people and organizations at the same time, their approach is still coordinated.

"What we're doing is sometimes we take the lead, sometimes we work with the Americans, sometimes we work with the Europeans," she said.

"At the end of the day, when all the G7 ministers gather, we know we're working on the same entities and individuals."

The latest round of sanctions, which also include four financial institutions, came into force last Friday.

Canada has sanctioned more than 1,500 individuals and entities since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

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Canada adds Putin's alleged girlfriend to the sanctions list - CBC News

Russian President Vladimir Putin may have staged a recent visit to a military hospital in Moscow to meet with wounded soldiers, according to eagle-eyed online users who claimed to have recognized one of the patients from a previous event.

Wearing a white lab coat, Putin was seen on video and in still photos talking to pajama-clad soldiers at Mandryk military hospital, which marked his first such visit since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.

Putin was accompanied on the visit by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. He asked one of the soldiers standing at attention next to their beds about his baby son, telling him: He will be proud of his dad.

After the hospital visit, Putin hailed the troops as heroes during a televised meeting with government officials.

But a day later, Adam Rang, a self-described counter-propaganda activist living in Estonia, tweeted that one of the soldiers in the hospital looked eerily familiar.

Putin met with a wounded solider who, by a strange coincidence, was also a factory worker he previously met, Rang stated.

Rang shared a photo of the purported soldier in the hospital room, and another image allegedly showing the same man with a receding hairline and a distinctive widows peak in a crowd of people meeting with Putin on another occasion.

Rang and Ukrainian race car driver Igor Shushko also shared a compilation of photos showing a cast of recurring characters meeting with Putin years apart.

In case you were wondering how #Putin can possibly risk being in the presence of regular #RussianPeople. He never does, Shushko tweeted.

The allegation that the hospital photo op was a fake was further bolstered by the mysterious writer behind the General SVR Telegram channel, who is said to be a former KGB spy with Kremlin ties.

In a Thursday post, the Telegram author argued that Putin did not visit the military hospital, and that video of his meeting with Russias wounded warriors had been pre-recorded, or canned.

Putin and the FPS (Federal Protective Service) are certainly magicians-illusionists, but they are still a far cry from David Copperfield, the post sarcastically concluded.

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Putin accused of faking visit to military hospital after photos reveal familiar face - New York Post

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Body language expert Judi James claims Vladimir Putin eyes "looks reddened" and he has a "lack of energy" in recent meeting with the Head of the Republic of Buryatia, Alexey Tsydenov

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Vladimir Putin appears to deeply inhale and ends call with Tsydenov

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been seen looking tired with "reddened eyes" and "deep grooves" during a video call in what could be new signs of illness, a body language expert has said.

Rumours of Putin's health continue with some experts say he is suffering from cancer or Parkinsons disease, others say he is recovering from surgery and on a course of steroids.

The claims are unconfirmed and unverified but body language experts believe he shows signs of being unwell.

"We can see a lowered chin hinting at lowered energy. His eye area looks reddened and there is a lack of energy in his eye expression," body language expert Judi James told The Mirror.

She says Putin's most recent meeting with Alexey Tsydenov, the Head of the Republic of Buryatia, shows the despot displaying a range of emotions from a "rather urgent desire to establish control to a more anxious and even slightly confused state".

Image:

During the meeting, Tsydenov spoke about the war in Ukraine.

However, he called it a "special military operation" and delighted at many of "his guys" from Buryatia "honourably fulfilling their duty" to protect people and ensure the strategic security of Russia.

He spoke about the Ministry of Defence's decision to present Lieutenant Baldan Tsydypov to the title of Hero of Russia, as he was reportedly seriously wounded and had his foot was amputated.

Putin said he supported it.

Ms James says there is a sense of urgency when Putin talks which "could suggest someone or some point that should not be argued with".

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She also said he seems confused, continuing: "With the notes apparently upside-down initially. He corrects this but begins to touch other sheets of paper, ending by straightening the paperwork in a correcting, straightening ritual that could suggests some levels of inner anxiety."

In an interview with a Ukrainian newspaper, Kyrylo Budanov, the Chief Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine's Ministry of Defence, declared Putin has cancer.

Bundanov said he "fully confirms" the information about the despot's ill health and added that his mental state was confused and hinted at the toll the failing war could be taking on him, claiming he was in a manic state.

Image:

"If you crop down to the eye area alone we seem to see a man looking tired and lacking in energy or enthusiasm," Ms James continues.

"His brows sag to the outer sides, they are also held puckered in the middle in a gesture of concern or worry that creates four or five deep grooves in the skin of his forehead."

Former MI6 operative Christopher Steele claimed to LBC Radio a few weeks ago that Putin has to take regular breaks from meetings to seek medical treatment.

He said: "There's no clear political leadership coming from Putin, who is increasingly ill, and in military terms, the structures of command and so on are not functioning as they should."

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Vladimir Putin seen with red eyes and deep grooves as new signs of illness emerge - The Mirror

Vladimir Putin

The subject of nuclear weapons is being pushed into the foreground by Russian media and officials.

Russias Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, said that the risk of a global nuclear war is very real. This ominous warning came not from some deranged psychopath like the ones who regularly demand Kyiv to be nuked on Russian state TV. These were the words of the top diplomat of the Russian Federation.

In diplomatic parlance, Lavrov essentially admitted that their vaunted offensive in Donbas is stalling, the war is lost, and Russia has nothing to counter Western weapons pouring in Ukraine. Politically and militarily, Russia is backed into a corner.

Since Putin cant accept defeat, the Kremlin is indicating that nuclear weapons are on the table as its last resort in this war.

Read also: Using nukes would force the world to put an end to Putins regime

This is nothing less than a threat to unleash an atomic war on the world. Even if Lavrov personally may not be eager to bring the end of days being but a minister of the Russian state his overlord is perfectly capable of and ready for the apocalypse. Lavrov merely broadcasts his masters will.

In any case, this was a perfectly serious statement. Id say its on the same level as the infamous article On the unity of Russian and Ukrainian peoples, written by Putin last summer. In that text, the dictator made a plain commitment to destroying Ukraine as a political entity if it refuses to forego its sovereignty and get absorbed by Russia.

Lavrov threatens the world with destruction, if it prevents Putin from annihilating Ukraine. Both him and Putin are dead serious. In my opinion, the international community should respond to these threats in a way that runs contrary to Putins expectations.

After launching its mad, irrational, and barbaric invasion of Ukraine, Russia has revealed that its no longer a credible, rational actor in the international arena. World leaders realize that Russian nuclear threats are best taken seriously, because the failure to do so would be prohibitively expensive. After all, the continued existence of human civilization is at stake. One person is currently openly threatening to destroy our civilization if his ludicrous demands are not met. This is nuclear terrorism on a grand scale its not just some major city like New York thats at stake, its all of humanity.

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Giving in to the terrorists demands is out of the question, it would only embolden him to make further demands, and inspire copycats. Sooner or later, the world will have to call his bluff at one red line or another, risking a global nuclear war. The only difference is that the longer we appease the terrorist, the more powerful he becomes, and the weaker and more demoralized the rest of the world will be. Appeasement is not an option.

Whats left to do then? Any security service official can answer that: the only option available is to eliminate the terrorist, who is holding the whole planet hostage, trying to force us all to meet his political demands. Not unlike a hypothetical asteroid, hurtling to wards Earth, this is a global problem that demands a global solution.

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In other words, scientists, diplomats, politicians, doctors, spies, soldiers, all have to put aside their grievances and work towards the resolution of one common problem. The West has started to realize the scope of the threat, and the EU, G7, and NATO are all working together, hand-in-glove.

They will be followed by China another crucial center of the modern world. Not to mention that Russia is relegated to being Chinas vassal now. Beijing is in a position to order Putin around.

Being somewhat hostile to the United States, the CCP looked upon Putin very favorably. Chinas President Xi Jinping gave Putin the green light to invade Ukraine only after the conclusion of the Beijing Olympics, and Russia obeyed.

But despite favoring Russia over the United States, China isnt looking forward to perishing in the fires of nuclear Armageddon for Putins obsession with Ukraine. I think Jinping told Putin: Go ahead, capture Ukraine if you can, but no nukes we definitely dont need that. China famously has the long-term perspective of becoming the primary economic, cultural, and scientific powerhouse of the planet. It has no ambition to transform into a radioactive wasteland something Putins gamble is pushing them towards.

Thats why, following Lavrovs threat, Chinas foreign ministry issued a rather harsh, by Chinese standards, statement: No one wants WWIII. All sides must show restraint around the Ukrainian crisis and avoid escalating the conflict. Beijing is signaling to Putin that Russia wont receive financial, technological, or military aid from China. Not even sympathies. And without Chinese support, the proverbial Russian warship has but one course to follow.

He brainwashed his populace into expecting a triumph, but as it turns out, it will be Ukraine parading its troops across Moscow. The problem is that Putin has no other way out. Nuclear war is all he thinks about now. Thats his only perceived salvation from a humiliating military defeat in Ukraine.

Putin doesnt know what to do next, so his finger is creeping towards the nuclear button. Thats why Im certain that Chinese security service will soon join their Western counterparts in figuring out a way to neutralize the Russian dictator if it hasnt happened already. Everyone around the globe will be pooling their resources towards stopping Putin. After all, nuclear war must be averted.

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Putin is inching towards his nukes, threatening to ...