Russian President Vladimir Putin could be prepping for global war, in the wake of deteriorating relations with the United States and other Western countries, according to an incendiary new report.
Putin sent out an order to top Russian officials, politicians and their children across the world demanding that they return to the Motherland, the Daily Star claimed.
The order comes amid rising tensions with the US over Syria and Putin’s last-minute cancellation of a planned trip to Paris to meet with French President François Hollande.
“This is all part of the package of measures to prepare elites to some big war,” Russian political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky told the Daily Star.
Retired Russian Lt. Gen. Evgeny Buzhinsky told the BBC Russia that US interests would suffer if the situation escalates.
“If you want a confrontation, you’ll get one. But it won’t be a confrontation that doesn’t harm the interests of the United States. You want a confrontation, you’ll get one everywhere,” Buzhinsky warned.
US-Russian relations have cratered in the past few weeks following President Obama’s decisions to pull out of talks on Syria and point a finger at Russia for hacking into computers at the Democratic National Committee.
Making matters worse, Putin scrapped plans to visit Paris after Hollande accused Russia of carrying out airstrikes to aid Syrian forces, which had committed a “war crime” in the devastated city of Aleppo.
Russian foreign policy analyst Fyodor Lukyanov considered Putin’s cancellation of his Paris visit a “serious step” toward Cold War relations with the West.
“This is part of the broader escalation in the tensions between Russia and the West, and Russia and NATO,” he told Agence France-Presse.