MOSCOW – A week after the attack on the Crocus City Hall near Moscow, President Vladimir Putin has not yet visited the site of the attack in Moscow or met the families of the victims, nor does he intend to do so. On Wednesday he made a surprise visit to Torzhok, a small town in the Tver region, north-west Russia, on his first trip after being re-elected for a fifth term in the Kremlin, where there was “a pre-assembled crowd” to welcome him of adoring locals”, is how the Russian journalist defined it Pyotr Kozlov.
In the video broadcast on TV, Putin is greeted with thunderous applause as soon as he emerges from the presidential limousine and then gives an autograph on the cover of an elderly lady’s book and kisses a ten-year-old boy.
Scenes similar to those seen in Dagestan last July, a few days after the revolt of the Wagner mercenary group led by Yevgeny Prigozhin. According to a government official quoted by Kozlov, the visit to Torzhok “aimed to demonstrate that the true Russian nation loves Putin” despite last Friday’s attack, the queues for the pacifist candidate Boris Nadezhdin excluded from the presidential elections and the mountain of flowers on grave of Alexei Navalny which would instead put him “in an unfavorable light”.
“Attacking NATO? Nonsense”
Putin’s tour of the Tver region did not end there, however. Putin also visited an ethnographic museum and finally the 344th state air force personnel center. It is here that, answering the pilots’ questions, Putin said that Russia has no intention of attacking Europe or any NATO country, nor Poland, the Baltic States or the Czech Republic, but he promised that, if the West will supply F16 fighters to Ukraine, then shoot them down “wherever they are”.
According to Putin, Western countries “frighten their populations with a possible “Russian threat”” to justify the contraction of their economies and quality of life. But, he added, “we have no aggressive intentions towards these states… It is complete nonsense, the idea of an attack on other countries – Poland, the Baltic states and even the Czechs are afraid. It’s just nonsense, another way to deceive the population and extort additional expenses from people, forcing them to carry this burden on their shoulders.”
Putin underlined that in 2022 the United States spent 3.5% of GDP on Defense, Russia 4%, but in absolute terms “the United States spent, God willing, 811 billion dollars and the Federation Russian 72 billion. With this relationship in mind, will we fight with NATO?”.
“We will hit the F16s wherever they are”
To those who instead asked whether it would be allowed to strike the F16 fighters that the West promised to send to Ukraine also at NATO airports, Putin then replied that such planes would not change “the situation on the battlefield” in Ukraine. And he added: “And we will destroy aircraft just as we destroy tanks, armored vehicles and other equipment today, including multiple rocket launchers.”
To then conclude: “Naturally, if they are used by airports in third countries, they will become legitimate targets for us, wherever they are located. And the F-16s are also carriers of nuclear weapons, and we will also have to take this into account when organizing combat work.”
Words which, according to former presidential advisor and political scientist Sergei Markov, are “a clear warning from Putin to the NATO countries: if you give up your airports for combat operations by the Ukrainian armed forces, we will strike them. The problem is that in Ukraine, apparently, there are currently no airfields for F16s. Therefore, NATO is considering the possibility of launching Ukrainian F16 planes from airports in Poland and Romania. Putin warns them: then we will hit them.”
Moscow: “Evidence of Kiev’s involvement in the attack”
To rekindle the conflict with Kiev and the West, accusations of their complicity in the attack a week ago continue, despite the Islamic State having claimed responsibility. Yesterday the Investigative Committee, the body responsible for the main criminal investigations in Russia, said it had new elements that would prove the so-called “Ukrainian lead”.
“The work with the detained terrorists, the examination of the technical devices seized from them and the analysis of information on financial transactions made it possible to obtain evidence of their links with Ukrainian nationalists,” the Committee assured on Telegram, claiming that the four jihadists also allegedly received “large sums of money and cryptocurrencies from Ukraine, which were used in the preparation of this crime.”
However, the Investigative Committee has not published any documents or evidence. So much so that John Kirby, spokesman for the US Security Council, responded that his farmer uncle “said the best manure dealers often carry their samples in their mouths” adding: “Russian officials appear to be good dung dealers” who seek of spreading “absurd propaganda”.
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– 2024-04-01 07:26:24
