An ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin has darkly predicted two capital cities in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — Warsaw in Poland and Helsinki in Finland — will be taken over and claimed by Russia.
In a blustering vow on his Russian TV show Friday, Vladimir Solovyov mocked U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinkin’s assertion that America “will continue to back Ukraine with the equipment that it needs to succeed, that it needs to win” its war with Russia, Newsweek reported.
"Also, most importantly, [Blinken] brought weapons, but he said: 'It's not allowed to hit Russian territory.' And what territory do you hit, you idiots? It's all Russia," Solovyov ranted in a clip translated into English and shared on X, formerly Twitter, by Anton Gerashchenko, former adviser to Ukraine's internal affairs minister.
“Moreover, what about the filthy language he's using in our Russian Kyiv? We'll present him with a rent charge for singing all kinds of nonsense in our Russian city."
Newsweek reported that when Vasyl Vakarov, another guest on the show, pointed out “that’s something new … ‘in our Russian city of Kyiv,’ Solovyov blustered: "Whose is it? Kyiv is the mother of Russian cities. Take the old lady back to her Motherland. The Ukronazis came here ... I think that in another five minutes, Warsaw and Helsinki will also be ours, Russian. And historically, it's all true."
Poland has been a member of NATO for 25 years and Finland joined the military alliance in April 2023; Newsweek noted that Putin in December 2023 said Moscow has "no interest" in fighting with NATO.
When Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, he claimed it was to "denazify" the country, Newsweek noted.
Ukraine, the United States, and experts on the region have denied Russia's wild claim that the war-torn country — led by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish — is corrupted by Nazis.
"If this continues, the guaranteed sanitary zone will be somewhere on the border with Poland. Or already in Poland itself," Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia and another Putin ally said of creating a possible zone on the border with or inside Poland, Newsweek reported.
Medvedev, a former Russian president and prime minister, wrote in a Telegram post translated into English on Friday: "This is not the first time that President Putin has said that for a quiet life, our country will have to create a sanitary zone, within which the neo-Nazi regime will not be able to hit targets on the territory of Russia [including, of course, all the lands that have returned to our state],” Newsweek reported.
"If this continues, the guaranteed sanitary zone will be somewhere on the border with Poland. Or already in Poland itself," Medvedev said.
Putin has claimed Moscow's goal in northeastern Ukraine is to create a buffer zone to protect its citizens from attacks.
Fran Beyer ✉
Fran Beyer is a writer with Newsmax and covers national politics.
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