Russia Ukraine war updates today: Boris johnson plays down Putin’s nuclear threats & More Trending News

A skinny-skinned Vladimir Putin has hit again on the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and different Western leaders who mocked his tough-man topless exploits, with the Russian chief claiming they might look “disgusting” in the event that they tried to repeat him.

Earlier this week, Mr Johnson jested that G7 leaders might take their garments off to “show that we’re tougher than Putin” amid Russia-West tensions over Moscow’s army motion in Ukraine.

He added that we have to “show our pecs”.

The US treasury division has blocked a belief the place sanctioned Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov held a property curiosity.

“The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced it has issued a Notification of Blocked Property to Heritage Trust, a Delaware-based trust in which OFAC-designated Russian oligarch Suleiman Abusaidovich Kerimov holds a property interest,” the Treasury Department stated in a press release.

The belief held belongings valued at over $1 billion as of Thursday, it added.

Boris Johnson sought to heal a cupboard rift by promising to hike defence spending to 2.5 per cent of Britain’s financial output by the tip of the last decade.

The prime minister wrapped up the Nato summit in Madrid with a pledge that would see greater than £55bn added to army budgets this decade, following Ben Wallace’s pleas for more cash.

However, senior Conservatives stated the PM’s ambition remained “feeble” and the goal too far off, given the gravity of the fast risk from Vladimir Putin’s Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin has misplaced one other colonel – the 57th in simply 4 months of war, as preventing intensifies in jap Ukraine.

Lieutenant Colonel Pavel Kislyakov, 40, was buried on Thursday with full army honours in his hometown within the Moscow area.

Kislyakov, commander of a prestigious unit of Russian paratroopers, is the 57th identified colonel to have been killed since president Putin ordered his troops to launch a “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Thomas Kingsley has extra:

Boris Johnson has performed down the estimated 35 nuclear threats made by president Vladimir Putin for the reason that begin his army operation – insisting as an alternative that he would be capable of overcome Ukrainian resistance by standard means.

In an interview marking the tip of the Nato summit in Spain, Mr Johnson informed LBC’s Nick Ferrari : “I think it’s very, very important that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be side-tracked by this kind of sabre-rattling.

“Because fundamentally, what Putin is trying to do is to reframe this as about Russia versus Nato.

“It’s not. It’s about his attack on an entirely innocent country, with conventional weapons, with artillery, bombardments with planes, shells and so on.

“And it’s about the Ukrainians’ right to protect themselves. That is what this is about.

“And what we had today at Nato was, yet again, the alliance being tested, being asked, being interrogated. Are we resolved? Are we determined? Will we give the Ukrainians the means to protect themselves?

“And the answer was absolutely yes and, if anything, the strength of the unity is greater than it was before.”

Vladimir Putin nonetheless has a strategy to get out of the war in Ukraine with out dropping his grip on energy in Moscow, Boris Johnson has advised.

He has beforehand been essential of Western leaders, like France’s Emmanuel Macron, who’ve advised that Putin have to be supplied a ladder to climb down to permit him to finish the battle with out dropping face.

Our political editor Andrew Woodcock has the story:

Missile strikes have greater than doubled over the past fortnight, figures present.

It comes a Ukrainian brigadier common stated on Thursday that Moscow was utilizing inaccurate Soviet-era missiles for greater than half of the assaults.

General Oleksii Hromov estimated that 68 civilian websites had been hit within the second half of this month.