United Nations, United States, Sept 21 (AFP/APP): US President Joe Biden tore into Vladimir Putin at the United Nations on Wednesday, hours after the Russian leader dramatically escalated his seven-month war in Ukraine by calling up 300,000 military reservists.
Biden accused Putin of “shamelessly” violating the UN Charter and castigated him over a threat to use nuclear weapons, warning that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
“Just today, President Putin has made overt nuclear threats against Europe,” Biden said in his address to the annual UN General Assembly, lambasting Putin’s “irresponsible” stance.
Russian forces have attacked Ukrainian schools, railway stations and hospitals, the US president said, to pursue a war aimed at “extinguishing Ukraine’s right to exist as a state.”
Putin’s mobilization order came as 10 prisoners of war — including two from the United States and five from Britain — were freed as part of an exchange between Russia and Ukraine.
The prisoners, who also hail from Sweden, Morocco and Croatia, were transferred to Saudi Arabia from Russia, Riyadh said, without specifying when they would be returned home.
But the diplomatic breakthrough did little to lower the temperature as Western leaders voiced outrage at Putin’s latest moves — and Moscow’s plan to stage annexation referendums this week in Russian-held regions of Ukraine.
Donetsk and Lugansk in the east and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south are holding votes over five days beginning Friday — ramping up the stakes in the conflict by allowing Moscow to accuse Ukraine of attacking supposedly Russian territory.
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