After Trump calls Russia a ‘paper tiger’, Putin asks ‘what is NATO?’ – National

Russian President Vladimir Putin Wired back on Thursday with US President Donald Trump for calling Russia A “paper tiger”, suggesting NATO Maybe a warning from the United States that if the Tomahawk missiles delivered Ukraine It would cause a dangerous new escalation.

The Russian war in Ukraine, Europe’s most deadliest since the Second World War, has fueled the greatest confrontation between Russia and the West since the Cuban rocket crisis in 1962, and Russian officials say they are now in a “hot” conflict with the West.

Putin, speaking in the Valdai Discussion Group in the Black Sea Resort of Sochi, said that Russian troops went along the entire front in Ukraine and that almost all NATO alliance guided by the US now fought against Russia.

Trump, who had said earlier that Kyiv should give up the country to make peace with Moscow, sharp last week, in reverse, has opposed, Say he thought Ukraine could win all the territory of RussiaAnd labeling Moscow a ‘paper tiger’. He repeated the line this week.

“A paper tiger. What follows? Go and deal with this paper tiger,” said Putin. “Well, if we fight with the entire NATO block, we move, develop and we feel confident and we are a ‘paper tiger’, what is NATO itself?”

Putin donated irony to European claims that Russian drones had invaded the NATO air space, and wore that he promised that he would not do it again in Denmark and that he had no drones who could fly to Lisbon.

The European authorities have accused Russia of brutal violations of the airspace of the region, including with recent raids by drones about Poland and fighter jets about Estonia.

He took a more serious tone about the possibility that the United States will deliver Tomahawk -Cruise missiles to Ukraine, and said that such a step would lead to a dangerous new wave of escalation.

“It is impossible to use Tomahawks without the direct participation of American military staff,” said Putin. “This means a completely new, qualitatively new phase of escalation, also in the relations between Russia and the United States.”

The United States has not announced that they have not announced Tomahawks to Ukraine so far.

At the same time, Putin greeted Trump’s efforts to help negotiate peace in Ukraine and described their Augustustop in Alaska as productive.

“It was good that we made an attempt to look for and possible ways to arrange the Ukrainian crisis,” he said, adding that he felt “comfortable” with Trump.

Trending now

• Trump’s 51st Jibe is ‘not funny anymore’, say MPs

• Ice officers To attend Bad Bunny Super Bowl -Rest time show, says Trump advisor

NATO members, he said, gave Ukraine of intelligence, weapons and training, and came up with what he brought as a hysteria about alleged Russia plans to attack a NATO member, that he rejected as “impossible to believe”.

“If someone still has the desire to compete with us in the military atmosphere, as we say, feel free, let them try,” Putin said. “The countermeasures of Russia will not last long.”

Putin portrays the war as a turning point in Moscow’s relations with the West, of which he says the Russia humiliated after the fall of the Soviet Union of 1991 by increasing NATO and switching on what he regards as the sphere of influence of Moscow.

Western European leaders and Ukraine brought the war as a land grip in imperial style and have repeatedly sworn Russian troops. They claim that unless Russia is defeated, Putin will risk an attack on a NATO member.

“I just want to say: a cooling down, quiet sleep and ensuring your own problems. Look what is happening in the streets of European cities,” Putin said.

Putin said that Ukraine’s armed forces had a serious lack of manpower and deserties, while Russia had enough soldiers. He suggested that Kyiv had to put an end to the war.

Russia, he said, controlled almost all province of Luhansk, about 81% of the Donetsk region, and about 75% of both Zaporizhia and Kherson regions.

– with extra files from the corresponding press