Russian President Vladimir Putin is rejecting speculation that Moscow is planning to attack NATO countries. His comments were released by the Kremlin on Wednesday. He was talking to military pilots about Russia’s ongoing and unprovoked war in Ukraine.
And the president said the idea that Russia could turn its attention next to other parts of Eastern Europe was nonsense. At the pool edge. This is complete rubbish. The possibility of us attacking some other countries, Poland Baltic states.
They are scaring the Czech with it. This is total drivel. This is yet another way to fool their own people and make the people spend more on defense. To make them carry this burden. That’s it. Claire Sebastian is with me.
It’s nonsense, he says. But of course, before you answer, let’s remember, bearing in mind the tens of thousands of troops that were massed along the border with Ukraine. And what did President Putin tell President Macron? Polski on the street on the discussions on military and security aspects?
As I said very clearly yesterday, we have had exchanges with President Putin and he told me that he would not be behind any escalation. I think that is important. It might have been in Poland, but it was a lie and it was nonsense.
So why should we believe him when he says this about these in Europe? Well, we shouldn’t because if you listen to the entirety of what he said, he says that, yes, it’s nonsense. We’re not going to attack nature countries.
Why would we? He says that the US accounts for 39% of global military spending, which is a credible statistic, by the way, in Russia, three and a half percent. Then he goes on to say, If F-16s are deployed to Ukraine, we will attack them. This is not surprising.
They’ve been attacking all sorts of Western equipment in Ukraine. But he also says that even if they are launched from airfields, in third countries, we would consider them a legitimate target. And if you really listen closely when he says them, it’s not clear whether he means the planes himself or the airfield.
So I think there’s definitely some ambiguity here. And I think we really should read this in the context of the other comments we’ve heard from Putin recently about projecting Russian force vis-a-vis NATO. Right. But he does not want to get into even a spat with nature.
He doesn’t. But he also wants to present NATO to his people as the aggressor here. He talks about NATO getting closer to Russia’s border, whereas Russia’s not touching it. All of that. So I think that’s part of the messaging here. But no, I think it’s true, you know, that NATO does have a greater capacity.
And certainly now with it having expanded so significantly since the start of the war was with them Finland. And in Sweden, he doesn’t. But I think overall, you do see this sort of projection of power from Putin. This is a good, good opportunity. I haven’t had a chance to sit opposite you for some time.
So is he feeling not by his election? That was never in doubt, but by the fact that the EU took forever The US still hasn’t come up with its its money. Ukraine, if not on the back foot, is at least trembling a little on the front foot.
Is he emboldened Putin? Yeah, I think he is. I think you can tell that from the way that he approached the election, there was very little campaigning. That was a lot of propaganda, but not a lot of sort of effort went into it. And I think he is talking a lot about the military. We see a lot of military content visiting this, you know, Air Force training facility and all of that.
But I think the terror attack that we saw in Moscow just one week after the election was a bit of a wild card in that regard. And we have your report flying straight for Russia’s biggest moneymaker, this precise hit is one of more than a dozen Ukrainian drone strikes reported on Russian oil refineries since the start of the year.