Wednesday 21 September 2022 10:11 PM Liz Truss issues defiant riposte after desperate Russian leader warns West of ... trends now
Liz Truss is set to warn Vladimir Putin he will never win in Ukraine despite his ‘desperate’ threat to use nuclear weapons in a speech on Thursday.
She and Joe Biden will both denounce the Russian despot in New York after he delivered a chilling speech in Moscow.
Putin said he had ordered the mobilisation of reserves to fight in Ukraine and claimed he was ‘not bluffing’ over the use of his nuclear arsenal.
The crisis dominated talks between the Prime Minister and President Biden last night during which they insisted the West would not yield to aggression.
Addressing the UN general assembly in the early hours, Miss Truss said Putin was ‘desperately trying to justify his catastrophic failures’.
Crisis talks: Liz Truss with Joe Biden in New York last night. They discussed Vladimir Putin’s escalation of the Ukraine war
She added: ‘He is doubling down by sending even more reservists to a terrible fate. He is desperately trying to claim the mantle of democracy for a regime without human rights or freedoms.
‘And he is making yet more bogus claims and sabre-rattling threats.
‘This will not work. The international alliance is strong – Ukraine is strong.’
Miss Truss, who has held talks in New York with Volodymyr Zelensky’s wife Olena, said Ukrainians were ‘not just defending their own country – they are defending our values and the security of the whole world. That’s why we must act’.
President Biden condemned Putin’s threat to deploy his nuclear arsenal following a series of military setbacks.
‘A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,’ he told the UN general assembly. ‘We will stand in solidarity against Russia’s aggression, period.’
He said Russia had ‘shamelessly violated the core tenets’ of the UN with a ‘brutal, needless war’ and its alleged war crimes ‘should make your blood run cold’.
The unprecedented warnings came as:
- Russia released five captured Britons in a deal brokered by Saudi Arabia, including two former soldiers sentenced to death
- Protests sprang up in Russian cities at the decision to mobilise 300,000 reservists;
- Queues formed at the border with Finland and air tickets sold out as potential conscripts tried to flee;
- Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg warned that any use of nuclear weapons would have ‘unprecedented consequences for Russia’;
- Foreign Secretary James Cleverly prepared to confront his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov with evidence that Moscow plans sham referendums in Ukraine’s breakaway republics;
- Miss Truss pledged to give Ukraine at least £2.3billion in military aid next year – the same as promised this year.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which was supposed to be over in three days, has been hit with a string of disasters.
Smiles: Shaun Pinner (centre left) and Aiden Aslin (centre right), arriving in Saudi Arabia with other hostages last night
Other British prisoners of war held captive by the Russian authorities have finally been released and are on their way back to the UK
These culminated with Ukrainian forces recapturing more than 1,000 square miles of territory this month.
In his rambling speech yesterday,
