By Vladimir Soldatkin
SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) -President Vladimir Putin swiped back on Thursday at U.S. President Donald Trump for calling Russia a “paper tiger”, suggesting NATO might be one and warning Europe that Moscow would respond swiftly if it thinks it is being provoked.
Russia’s war in Ukraine, Europe’s deadliest since World War Two, has sparked the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, and Russian officials say they are now in a “hot” conflict with the West.
Putin, speaking at the Valdai Discussion Group in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, said that Russian forces were advancing along the entire front in Ukraine and that almost all of the U.S.-led NATO alliance was now fighting against Russia.
Trump, who had previously said Kyiv should give up land to make peace with Moscow, reversed his rhetoric sharply last week, saying he thought Ukraine could win back all territory from Russia, and labelling Moscow a “paper tiger”. He repeated the line this week.
“A paper tiger. What follows then? Go and deal with this paper tiger,” Putin said. “Well if we are fighting with the entire NATO bloc, we are moving, advancing, and we feel confident, and we are a ‘paper tiger’, then what is NATO itself?”
NATO members, he said, were providing Ukraine with intelligence, weapons and training, and whipping up what he cast as hysteria about alleged plans of Russia to attack a NATO member, which he dismissed as “impossible to believe”.
“If anyone still has a desire to compete with us in the military sphere, as we say, feel free, let them try,” Putin said. “Russia’s countermeasures will not be long in coming.”
‘COOL DOWN, SLEEP CALMLY,’ PUTIN TELLS NATO
Putin portrays the war as a watershed moment in Moscow’s relations with the West, which he says humiliated Russia after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union by enlarging NATO and encroaching on what he considers Moscow’s sphere of influence.
Western European leaders and Ukraine cast the war as an imperial-style land grab and have repeatedly vowed to defeat Russian forces. They argue that unless Russia is defeated, Putin will risk an attack on a NATO member.
“I just want to say: Cool down, sleep calmly, and take care of your own problems. Just take a look at what’s happening on the streets of European cities,” Putin said.
Putin said Ukraine’s armed forces had a grave lack of manpower and desertions, while Russia had enough soldiers. He suggested that Kyiv should negotiate an end to the war.
Russia, he said, controlled almost all of Luhansk province, about 81% of the Donetsk region, and about 75% of both Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
Russian forces control about 19% of Ukraine and have taken 4,750 square km (1,834 square miles) over the past year, according to pro-Ukrainian maps.
(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin and Reuters in Moscow; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; editing by Guy Faulconbridge, Mark Trevelyan, Andrew Osborn and Cynthia Osterman)
