MOSCOW – Russia’s President Vladimir Putin vowed a decisive response to any country threatening Russia and lashed out against Germany for promising tanks for Kyiv.
His threats came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that the Kremlin was consolidating its forces for a fresh offensive.
Zelensky was speaking in Kyiv beside EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, who said the bloc was looking to finalise fresh sanctions against Russia by February 24, exactly one year after Putin ordered troops into Ukraine.
In the southern Russian city of Volgograd, Putin said: “It’s unbelievable but true. We are again being threatened by German Leopard tanks.”
He was speaking at a ceremony commemorating the Red Army’s victory against Nazi troops 80 years ago in Stalingrad, as the city was then known.
“We have something to respond with,” he added according to AFP. “A modern war with Russia will be completely different.”
Ukraine this month secured promises from the West for deliveries of modern battle tanks to fight Russian forces, and Kyiv is now asking for long-range missiles and fighter jets.
Russia is “preparing to try to take revenge, not only against Ukraine, but against a free Europe and the free world,” Zelensky told a joint press conference with von der Leyen.
Putin has insisted that Russia is weathering the barrage of sanctions imposed by Ukraine’s Western allies and will continue its military campaign in Ukraine.
But von der Leyen said sanctions were already “eroding” Russia’s economy, “throwing it back by a generation”. She estimated that an existing oil price cap alone was costing Moscow around 160 million euros every day.
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