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Salon
Salon
Politics
Sarah K Burris

Does Putin have a hit list?

Russian President Vladimir Putin (Kay Nietfeld/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has crafted a hit list, according to his Russian state media mouthpiece.

The Daily Beast cited the Russian show The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov made it clear that things aren't going well with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and now the leader is plotting revenge.

Pro-Putin propagandist Yevgeny Satanovsky, who also works at Russia's Institute of the Middle East, said during the show that the solution is a deadly one.

"How do we win? How should we react to the Americans? What should Russia do?" he said. "Russia is what it is, in terms of a nation. We'll continue to be the way we are. Those who are with us will be fine and the rest we will kill... Acting against us is a relatively small group that is in charge of this camp—they are menacing and fear nothing. Since Gorbachev's times, once we started to play by their rules, they stopped fearing us. This is the main factor."

When asked if he meant all of the civilians living in NATO countries he claimed it wasn't them, but the leaders were a different matter.

"There aren't 1.5 billion people directing the process from the other side, but about one to two hundred. They should realize that if push comes to shove, that means the end of them, personally… You're aware that I know these people. I know all of them. I've seen them all. Only the understanding that they're personally facing the end... only that will have an effect on those people," the Daily Beast quoted him.

He also said that he gets mad when people claim that peace is better than war.

"No, peace is not better. There will be no peace. The goal of these people is for our country not to exist, for the people who live here not to exist and even for the language we speak to be gone—or even a memory that any of that ever existed," he said. "They want to make an entry in an encyclopedia: 'There used to be Russians, there used to be Russia—but now it's gone.'"

Moscow State University Dean Andrey Sidorov, who also appears on the show, said that the war is on land that is rightfully Russian.

"Now these are our defeats, we're fighting on our land. Why should we show any mercy to those who are directing this war?" he asked.

Over the past several months, Putin has put together a list of people in the west who he has subjected to sanctions. It's everyone from President Joe Biden, former Secretary Hillary Clinton and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to actors like Sean Penn, who filmed a documentary in Ukraine and Ben Stiller, who visited Ukraine to lend support.

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