‘Insane idiot but not Dr Evil’ Putin’s mental state questioned over Ukraine invasion

Putin ‘ok with being a war criminal’ says Ukrainian MP

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Alexander Temerko, an energy tycoon born in the former Soviet Union, has been the latest among a number of people to question Putin’s sanity over Moscow’s attack on Kyiv as he called the Russian leader “an old man who is not well”.

Mr Temerko, who has given more than £730,000 to the Conservative Party, dismissed a comparison with fictional supervillain Douglas Powers, also known as Dr Evil, played by Mike Myers in the Austin Powers film series.

When asked on BBC Radio 4’s PM programme if Putin is like a James Bond villain who could launch nuclear weapons to save himself, he said: “Sorry, he is insane and an idiot but not Dr Evil.

“He is an old man who is not well, probably, and not well mentally.

“He doesn’t understand, deeply, profoundly, doesn’t understand what Ukraine now is.”

The Ukraine-born businessman, who is behind Aquind Ltds’ proposed £1.2 billion cross-Channel power project recently blocked by the Government, warned he thinks Putin is “ready to escalate the situation more and more”.

Aquind — part-owned by Russian-born former oil tycoon Victor Fedotov — wanted to lay cables through Portsmouth, Hampshire, to Normandy but Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said he was not satisfied “more appropriate alternatives to the proposed route” had been fully considered.

As a director of the company, which has reportedly donated £700,000 to 34 Conservative MPs since the Aquind project began, Mr Temerko is planning to fight No10 over its decision.

He told the PA news agency he did not see “a conflict of interest” in making major donations to the ruling party while pressing the Government to approve a project of which he is a director.

He claimed: “I support many, many MPs, it’s my friends, it’s not my donations because I want to receive something.”

Speaking of the sanctions issued in response to the war launched by Putin, Mr emerko said Russian oligarchs need to be targeted even if it won’t harm them much.

He said: “When we’re looking for properties of oligarchs, that’s effective, but Russian oligarchs are billionaires.

“Property here is maybe £10 million, £20 million, maybe £100 million. For them it’s not big damage, to be honest.

“But we need to do that, absolutely, because we need to do it for solidarity with Ukraine.”

His words came amid desperate attempts by a united West to hinder the disaster in Eastern Europe from going any further.

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On the eighth day of the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, the implications of the assault are impossible to overlook, with one million people having had to flee the country already.

Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR), said in a statement on Thursday: “In just seven days we have witnessed the exodus of one million refugees from Ukraine to neighbouring countries.”

The one million mark, the agency added, was passed “as of midnight in central Europe based on counts collected by national authorities” and accounts for more than two percent of Ukraine’s population of 44 million.

On Tuesday, Mr Grandi said: “We are looking at what could become Europe’s largest refugee crisis this century.”

According to Ukraine’s state emergency service, more than 2,000 civilians have died since the attack began on February 24.

On Russia’s side, meanwhile, roughly five hundred soldiers have been killed and more than 1,500 wounded because of “Putin’s war”, the UK Defence Ministry said.

They added: “The actual number of those killed and wounded will almost certainly be considerably higher and continue to rise.”

As advances by Russian forces continue, with fiercer-than-expected resistance by Volodymyr Zelensky’s government and its servicemen, analysts are trying to make sense of Putin’s train of thought – with some calling his decisions irrational and erratic.

According to CNN, a source familiar with recent US intelligence reporting on the Russian president’s state of mind said on Monday: “Everything US has [is] in [the] realm of conjecture because Putin’s decisions and statements don’t seem to be making sense.”

Another report claimed his behaviour had become “highly concerning and unpredictable”.

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