(Moscow) Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday called on the Ukrainian military to “seize power” in Kiev by overthrowing President Volodymyr Zelensky and his entourage, whom he described as “neo-Nazis” and “drug addicts”.
Posted at 10:33 a.m.
“Take the power in your hands. It seems to me that it will be easier to negotiate between you and me,” Mr Putin told the Ukrainian army in an intervention broadcast on Russian television.
He claimed that he was not fighting army units in Ukraine but nationalist formations which behave “like terrorists” using civilians “like human shields”.
Mr. Putin also described Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his ministers as a “clique of drug addicts and neo-Nazis, who settled in Kiev and took the entire Ukrainian people hostage”.
Moscow has called the Ukrainian authorities “neo-Nazis” or a “junta” since 2014 and the outbreak of war in the Russian-speaking east of Ukraine between separatists and Kiev forces, despite Mr. Zelensky having Jewish origins.
The charges of “drug addict” refer to those launched by Mr. Zelensky’s detractors during the 2019 presidential election, in which he was comfortably elected.
Russia criticizes Ukraine for having integrated into its armed forces units close to the extreme right and has cited the “denazification” of Ukraine as one of the objectives of its invasion.
Mr Putin on Friday accused these units of acting “like terrorists”.
Ukraine has also compared the actions of Russia to those of “Nazi Germany” during the Second World War.