Putin to Barosso: Russia could occupy Kyiv in 14 days
Vladimir Putin has said Russian forces could conquer the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in two weeks if he so ordered, the Kremlin has confirmed, The Guardian reports.
Moscow declined to deny that the president had spoken of taking Kyiv in a phone conversation on Friday with José Manuel Barroso, the outgoing president of the European commission.
EU leaders held a summit on Saturday to decide who should run the union for the next five years, but the session was quickly preoccupied by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and how to respond.
Barroso told the closed meeting that Putin had told him Kyiv would be an easy conquest for Russia, according to the Italian newspaper, La Repubblica. According to the account, Barroso asked Putin about the presence of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine. Nato says there are at least 1,000 Russian forces on the wrong side of the border. The Ukrainians put the figure at 1,600.
“The problem is not this, but that if I want I’ll take Kyiv in two weeks,” Putin said, according to La Repubblica.
The Kremlin did not deny Putin had spoken of taking Kyiv, but instead complained about the leak of the Barroso remarks.
Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president, attended the EU summit and painted an apocalyptic picture of the conflict, with EU leaders dropping their usual public poise in a heated debate.
Merkel pointed to the dangers for the Baltic states on Russia’s western borders, home to large ethnic Russian minorities. She said Estonia and Latvia could be Putin’s next targets, according to La Repubblica.
Defence of the two countries – both of which are Nato and EU members and part of the euro single currency zone – is the centrepiece of this week’s Nato summit in Wales and the alliance is said to view that defence as a red line which Putin dare not cross. The US president, Barack Obama, is to deliver a speech in Estonia on Wednesday repeating that message.
Source: The Guardian