The Daily Populous Thursday August 29th, 2024 evening edition
Authored by huffingtonpost.co.uk and submitted by ObjectiveAd6551

Russian president Vladimir Putin with Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister via Associated Press

Russia’s foreign minister just compared the West to “small children playing with matches” in his latest attack on Ukraine’s supporters.

Sergei Lavrov, one of Vladimir Putin’s top aides for the last two decades, suggested the US and its allies were tempting World War 3 by allowing Ukraine to attack Russia with Western missiles.

On Wednesday, he said: “We are now confirming once again that playing with fire – and they are like small children playing with matches – is a very dangerous thing for grown-up uncles and aunts who are entrusted with nuclear weapons in one or another Western countries.

“Americans unequivocally associate conversations about Third World War as something that, God forbid, if it happens, will affect Europe exclusively.”

According to Reuters news agency, Lavrov said the West “asking for trouble” by thinking about easing restrictions on how the weapons it supplies to Ukraine are used, after Kyiv shifted from defence to offence in recent weeks.

He added that Russia was “clarifying” its nuclear doctrine, a document from 2020 which explains in what circumstances its president would consider deploying a nuclear weapon.

His comments come as Ukraine occupies 1,200 sq km of Russian land in the Kursk region after unexpectedly breaching the country’s borders for the first time since World War 2.

The Kremlin has already warned there would be a significant response to the occupation, but it has struggled to remove the troops in the recent weeks.

Putin has consistently warned of escalating the war if the West continues to support Ukraine, though he has repeatedly suggested he does not want to clash with US-led NATO.

However, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier this week that Kremlin threats were empty.

Meanwhile, Russia has also criticised the International Atomic Energy Agency after it travelled to the Kursk nuclear power plant.

The UN watchdog went to visit the station near to Ukraine’s incursion after it was damaged by a drone strike last week.

The watchdog did not say who was to blame for the damage, and its director general Rafael Grossi said “pointing fingers is something” that I “must take extremely seriously”.

But, according to Russian state news agency RIA, foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova called for the watchdog to be “more objective” in its assessment.

While pressuring the UN watchdog to lean towards Russia, she claimed she did not want Grossi to be “in favour of our country, not in favour of confirming Moscow’s position, but in favour of facts with one specific goal.”

She said this was just “ensuring safety and preventing the development of a scenario along a catastrophic path, to which the Kyiv regime is pushing everyone.”

charlieglide on August 29th, 2024 at 11:19 UTC »

Start a war and then complain that there is a lot of countries that are against.

Deep_Blue_Kitsune on August 29th, 2024 at 10:40 UTC »

The insane murderer complains that his victims and hostages struggle too much when he tries to murder them. Go figure

wildyam on August 29th, 2024 at 10:17 UTC »

So what does that make Russia? The unsupervised special needs child with a key to a prepper family armoury?