Ukraine war: US stockpiles anti-radiation drugs amid Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats
An expert on Vladimir Putin’s “failing health” has made a frightening claim, as the US stockpiles on $450m worth of drugs used to treat radiation sickness.
World
Don't miss out on the headlines from World. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Vladimir Putin wants to take the world with him when he dies, according to an “expert” on the president’s “failing health”, claiming the decision to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine has been made.
Political scientist Valery Solovey, a former professor at Moscow’s prestigious Institute of International Relations [MGIMO], made the sensational claims ahead of the Russian leader’s 70th birthday on Friday.
Dr Solovey said the situation is closer to “nuclear apocalypse” than it was during the Cuban missile crisis.
“The cause is the Russian President Vladimir Putin who seriously intends to demonstrate the capabilities of nuclear weapons – tactical nuclear weapons,” Dr Solovey said.
“Putin cannot allow himself to be defeated. He has two tools left in his sleeve – mobilisation, which he is using (and) nuclear weapons.”
This prediction comes as rumours continue to spread about the Russian president’s health, with Dr Solovey speculating Mr Putin is suffering from cancer, Parkinson’s disease and a schizoaffective disorder.
US SPENDS $300M ON DRUGS TO TREAT RADIATION SICKNESS
The United States has spent $US290 million ($A450 million) to stockpile doses of the anti-radiation drug Nplate.
The purchase comes amid Vladimir Putin’s escalation of threats in the wake of his partial mobilisation of the Russian military, including the movement of nuclear-capable missiles and submarines.
The US Health and Human Services said the procurement of Nplate, which is used to treat acute radiation syndrome (ARS), was part of “longstanding, ongoing to be better prepared to save lives following radiological and nuclear emergencies”.
Japan issued a rare warning to seek shelter after North Korea fires missile over country
The health agency did not identify Russia’s aggression in Ukraine or Putin’s nuclear threats as the driving force behind the purchase of Nplate, which reduces radiation-induced bleeding by stimulating the body’s production of platelets.
The announcement comes just days after Ukraine prepared for a nuclear attack by giving out anti-radiation potassium iodine pills.
In a speech announcing the annexation of regions in Ukraine’s east and south, Putin vowed to use “all the means at our disposal” to protect Russia and its people.
“This is not a bluff,” he said.
Iodine pills, which block the absorption of radiation, must be taken immediately before or after exposure to radioactive Iodine 131 to help prevent acute radiation sickness. The Nplate drug is used to treat the sickness once it occurs.
ARS causes blood clotting as a result of low platelet counts, leading to uncontrolled bleeding that can result in death. Nplate is approved to treat adult and childhood immune thrombocytopenia, a blood disorder resulting in low platelet counts.
The repurposing of Nplate for acute radiation syndrome adds to the stockpiles of the US’s ARS drug treatments, which also include Leukine.
PUTIN CLAIMS UKRAINE TERRITORIES
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into Russian legislation his annexation of four Ukrainian territories – including Lugansk – as the European Union agreed a new round of sanctions against Moscow in response.
On Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow would take back land it lost to Kyiv within the annexed regions, vowing they would be “Russian forever and will not be returned”.
Mr Putin initially inked agreements with the Moscow-installed leaders of the four regions to become subjects of the Russian Federation, despite condemnation from Kyiv and the West.
The four territories – Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia – create a land corridor between Russia and the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014.
Together, the five regions make up around 20 per cent of Ukraine.
The Kremlin annexed the territories after hastily conducting referendums, denounced as void by Kyiv and its Western allies, but has yet to confirm what areas exactly of those regions are being annexed.
The signing of the laws by Mr Putin completes the last step of the annexation process, based on the Russian legal system. It is illegal under international law.
Russian forces do not have full control over Kherson or Zaporizhzhia and recently lost control of several settlements in Donetsk.
The latest battlefield maps from Moscow showed that Russian troops had left many areas in Kherson, including along the west bank of the Dnipro River.
Mr Putin said on Wednesday that he expected the situation to “stabilise” in Ukrainian regions annexed by the Kremlin after Moscow suffered military setbacks and lost several key towns to Kyiv.
He also ordered his government to seize control over Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in the Russian-controlled region of Zaporizhzhia with IAEA head Rafael Grossi en route to Kyiv for consultations on the facility.
Ukraine earlier claimed victories over Russian troops in the eastern region of Lugansk as the Kremlin vowed to recapture territory lost in a lightning Ukrainian counteroffensive.
In recent weeks, Ukraine’s forces, bolstered by Western weapons, have wrested Russian troops out of a string of towns and villages in the southern Kherson region and the eastern separatist strongholds of Lugansk and Donetsk.
“We are working on the assumption that the situation in the new territories will stabilise,” Mr Putin told Russian teachers during a televised video call.
Just hours earlier, the Ukrainian-appointed head of Lugansk Sergiy Gaiday announced that the “de-occupation of the Lugansk region has already officially started”.
A senior Russian politician called on military officials to tell the truth about developments on the ground in Ukraine following the string of bruising defeats.
“We need to stop lying,” the chairman of the lower house of parliament’s defence committee, Andrei Kartapolov, told a journalist from state-run media.
“The reports of the defence ministry do not change. The people know. Our people are not stupid. This can lead to loss of credibility.”
UKRAINE PREPARES FOR NUCLEAR ATTACK
Meanwhile, it’s emerged that Kyiv authorities have started giving out anti-radiation pills over fears of a Russian nuclear strike on Ukrainian capital.
The Kyiv city council is providing evacuation centres with potassium iodine pills in preparation for a nuclear attack, reports The Sun.
The pills can help to block the absorption of harmful radiation from radioactive Iodine 131, should a nuclear disaster happen.
People must take the pills immediately before or after nuclear radiation exposure to work.
If a nuclear strike happens, the pills will be distributed to contaminated areas, Kyiv authorities confirmed in a statement.
It comes after reports the Russian leader Vladimir Putin may test a nuclear bomb on the Ukrainian border, as a show of force to the West.
Russia’s biggest submarine, Belgorod, is understood to be on the move and could be armed with nuclear torpedos.
It can reportedly trigger radioactive tsunamis with its underwater drone torpedo Poseidon, which potentially could see coastlines flattened.
There are reports the Belgorod is in Arctic waters and is it feared Putin may try to test it’s capabilities for the first time.
UKRAINE TO GET MORE WEAPONS SUPPORT
The United States announced more weapons for Ukraine’s army as it claimed sweeping gains along two major battlefronts in an offensive rush to beat the arrival of fresh Russian troops and the looming winter.
The White House said it was shipping four more Himars precision rocket launchers, 32 artillery pieces, 75,000 artillery rounds and 200,000 rounds of small arms ammunition to Ukraine as Russian fighters were back-pedalling from Kyiv’s attack.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday said his forces were making “rapid and powerful” gains and had retaken “dozens” of villages from Russia this week in the east and south.
In a briefing in Moscow, the Russian military conceded in updated maps of the fronts that they had incurred significant territorial losses.
A Kremlin-installed official in the southern Ukraine region of Kherson, which Moscow declared Friday was now its own “sovereign territory,” urged residents to stay calm amid the Ukrainian army’s thrust, promising that Russian jets and artillery were fighting back.
“There is no reason to panic,” Kirill Stremousov, the Moscow-appointed deputy head of Kherson region, said on social media.
“Yes, you can hear explosions at a distance, but they’re infrequent.”
Mr Zelenskyy said eight settlements in the southern Kherson region, where Moscow’s forces have retreated, have been retaken.
The latest battlefield maps from Moscow showed that Russian troops had left many areas in Kherson, including along the west bank of the Dnipro River.
In the eastern Kharkiv region, the maps indicated that Russian forces had almost entirely abandoned the east bank of the Oskil River, potentially giving the Ukrainians space to shell key Russian troop transportation and supply corridors.
“Our soldiers do not stop. And it’s only a matter of time before we expel the occupier from all of our land,” Zelenskyy said.
PUTIN WARNS: ‘ONE MONTH TO MAKE CHOICE’
The Kremlin earlier warned residents of the Ukrainian regions illegally annexed by Russia that they have one month to change their citizenship.
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Yevgeny Ivanov told state news agency RIA Novosti on Tuesday that the process will be “the same as it was with Crimea”.
“Within a month they must decide, make a choice,” Mr Ivanov said on Tuesday, adding that in the new territories, the issuance of documents will be accelerated.
Mr Putin last week announced that Moscow had annexed four areas of Ukraine which held Kremlin-organised referendums on land seized by Russia’s military.
The US and other Western countries have called those referendums shams carried out at gunpoint and vowed never to recognise the illegal annexation.
Russia on Friday vetoed a US-led bid at the UN Security Council to condemn its annexations. It got no support for the veto, with China and India abstaining.
More than 200,000 people have been conscripted into the Russian army since Mr Putin announced a mobilisation drive on September 21, according to Moscow’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.
“As of today more than 200,000 people have entered the army,” Mr Shoigu said during a televised meeting on Tuesday.
Russia’s mobilisation is aimed at propping up Moscow’s forces in Ukraine. It was announced after a series of military setbacks.
The Kremlin has called the mobilisation “partial” and said it aims to recruit 300,000 men.
Shoigu said those mobilised are being trained at “80 training grounds and six training centres”.
The Kremlin’s mobilisation has led to some protests and an exodus of men of military age – with tens of thousands fleeing the draft, mainly to ex-Soviet neighbours.
Kazakhstan said Tuesday that more than 200,000 Russians had crossed into it in two weeks.
Mr Putin stepped in last week to calm fears and urged authorities to “correct all mistakes” with the mobilisation.
On Tuesday, Mr Shoigu demanded that military and navy commanders help “quickly adapt the recruits to combat”.
He called on them to “conduct additional training with (the mobilised) under the guidance of officers with combat experience” and said they can only be sent to war after “training and combat co-ordination”.
The Russian defence minister also urged army recruitment centres not to turn away volunteers “if there are no serious reasons”.
– with AFP
Join the conversation
Pakistan launches retaliatory strikes
The conflict between the two nuclear-armed nations has now killed more than 60 civilians.
Read more
Trump’s wild plan for Mexican drug cartels
With thousands of troops ready at the border, Donald Trump has revealed his big plan for Mexican drug cartels.
Read more