Lavrov says Russia will continue Ukraine war till ‘the end’

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday he believed some foreign leaders were preparing for war against Russia and that Moscow would press on with its military operation in Ukraine until “the end”.

Lavrov also said Russia had no thoughts of nuclear war.

Offering no evidence to back up his remarks in an interview with state television, a week after Russian invaded Ukraine, he also accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, an ethnic Jew, of presiding over “a society where Nazism is flourishing”, Reuters reported.

He said he had no doubt that a solution to the crisis in Ukraine would be found, and a new round of talks were about to start between Ukrainian and Russian officials.

But he said Russia’s dialogue with the West must be based on mutual respect, accused NATO of seeking to maintain supremacy and said that while Russia had a lot of goodwill, it could not let anyone undermine its interests.

Moscow would not let Ukraine keep infrastructure that threatened Russia, he said.

Moscow could also not tolerate what he said was a military threat from Ukraine, he said, adding that he was convinced that Russia was right over Ukraine.

“The thought of nuclear is constantly spinning in the heads of Western politicians but not in the heads of Russians,” he said. “I assure you that we will not allow any kind of provocation to unbalance us.”

Russia did not feel politically isolated, and the question of how Ukraine lives should be defined by its people, he said.

Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of hitting civilian areas but Lavrov said Russian troops had strict orders to use high-precision weapons to destroy military infrastructure.

Offering no evidence, Lavrov said Russia had information that the United States was worried about the prospect of losing control over what he described as chemical and biological laboratories in Ukraine and accused Britain of building military bases there, Reuters reported.

Russian businessman places $1m bounty on Putin’s head

A Russian businessman has placed a $1 million bounty on Vladimir Putin’s head and urged the country’s military officers to bring the president to justice.

Entrepreneur Alex Konanykhin made the promise in a post on social media site LinkedIn and called it his “moral duty” to take action and help Ukraine.

The bounty offered by Konanykhin, who is now based in the US, places an even more direct target on the Russian leader as backlash over the invasion continues to escalate, Newsweek reported.

Konanykhin said in a Facebook post Tuesday that he promised to pay the officer or officers the money for arresting “Putin as a war criminal under Russian and international laws.”

An earlier version of Konanykhin’s post on LinkedIn included a photo of Putin with the words “Wanted: Dead or alive. Vladimir Putin for mass murder,” according to The Jerusalem Post. The post appears to have been taken down.