(Mychajlo instead of Mikhail in the first sentence)
KIEV (dpa-AFX) – Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak sees Russia’s threats of further attacks against Ukraine as pure boasting. Because Russia is actually “dead a long time ago”. But the Kremlin is not yet aware of this fact, said the member of President Volodomyr Zelensky’s advisory staff on New Year’s Day in Kiev. “Sometimes when a person dies, he doesn’t know it, but he is dead. And that is exactly the case with Russia – it is already dead, but it does not fully understand this yet,” Podoljak was further quoted by the Unian agency.
Kremlin boss Wladimir Putin A few hours earlier, he had announced further attacks against Ukraine during a visit to wounded soldiers in a Moscow military clinic.
Starting a war with Ukraine was the “fatal decision of an uneducated being with the surname Putin,” said Podoljak about the Russian president’s war planning almost two years ago.
Podoljak was of the opinion that this war had not only put Russia on the losing side militarily. “Roughly speaking, Russia’s prestige is being wiped out, Russia’s historical weight is being wiped out, Russia’s influence, its participation in international institutions, its economic participation in the modern world is being wiped out,” Podolyak said.
“The agony of Russia is happening now, and they are not yet aware of it, so they are having a festival during the plague,” said Podoljak./cha/DP/he