Putin and his puppets toast with champagne amid warning about Ukraine | World News

Vladimir Putin and his puppets celebrated his election campaign with a glass of champagne as the president shared a terrifying warning about the future of Ukraine.

Footage showed Russia’s leader surrounded by his press secretary Dmitry Peskov, foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and decorated military generals under the golden domes of the Kremlin on Friday.

Fragment of their conversations were published by TV presenter Pavel Zarubin on his Telegram channel.

In one of the clips, he says about Ukraine: ‘When you do not have your own base, you do not have your own ideology, you do not have your own industry, you do not have your own money, you do not have your own anything, then there is no future. And we (Russia) have it.’

Without citing credible evidence, the president also stressed that his soldiers are acting ‘more and more competently’ while fighting for ‘the future’ of their nation on the frontlines in Ukraine.

Another video showed the leader whispering in the ear of a military leader about the mood amongst Russian troops.

‘What is the mood like now?’ he asks while shaking the man’s hand. He responds, ‘Very good, very good.’

This comes as Putin announced his plans to stay in charge for another six years.

There is little doubt over the outcome of the 2024 election as his supporters have ensured that prominent opposition politicians like Alexei Navalny and Ilya Yashin remain behind bars.

Others as in the case of ex deputy premier Boris Nemtsov – shot near the Kremlin in 2015 – were murdered.

Under constitutional reforms orchestrated in 2020, Putin can seek two more six-year terms after his term expires next year.

This would potentially allow him to remain in power until 2036.

With his hands on all the levers of power in the country, the Navalny camp argues this is not a real election. 

But it sees the 100-day campaign window as a rare opportunity to draw Russians into a political conversation and convince them that the war and the economic strains it has brought are problems of Putin’s making.

‘Of course it’s impossible to beat Putin in the “elections”,’ top Navalny aide Leonid Volkov said.

‘The aim of our campaign is to change the political agenda in Russia.’

So far only three people have declared their intention to run against him.

Two are low-profile figures, Boris Nadezhdin and Yekaterina Duntsova, who may struggle to gather the 300,000 signatures required to support their candidacies.

The third, nationalist Igor Girkin, is in prison awaiting trial on a charge of inciting extremist activity.

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