Pentagon Threatening To Assassinate Putin

According to TASS, Lavrov said that he received reports from anonymous officials stating that the Pentagon is threatening to assassinate Putin.

Tuesday, Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia, criticized what he claimed were US threats to assassinate President Vladimir Putin, allegedly in response to a number of reports from anonymous sources.

“There are some ‘anonymous officials’ from the Pentagon who have actually enunciated threats to deliver a ‘decapitating strike’ on the Kremlin, which is in fact an assassination threat against the Russian president,” Lavrov said, according to TASS. 

“If someone really has such ideas, then this someone should think long and hard about the possible consequences of such plans,” the top Russian diplomat warned.

Additionally, the censure came less than a week after Senator Lindsey Graham demanded that the Russian president be “taken out” in order to put an end to the conflict in Ukraine.

However, it appears that Lavrov was referring particularly to a Newsweek article from September that said anonymous US defence officials were considering plans for a “decapitation strike to murder Putin in the heart of the Kremlin.”

The pertinent portion of that Newsweek article from September 29 is shown below:

Details about what “decisively” means have not been publicly revealed. The military sources tell Newsweek that there are subtle moves being made with regard to nuclear threats, including moving submarines and aircraft and drilling B-52 bombers. But they stress that non-nuclear military options—the use of conventional weapons and special operations, as well as cyber and space attack—are front and center, to include a decapitation strike to kill Putin in the heart of the Kremlin.

Continuing his Tuesday response to this and more recent threats emanating from the West, Lavrov said that “It seems that they have shed all vestiges of respectability.”

The infamous [ex-British PM] Liz Truss is a striking example, he said, considering that she declared openly and directly during her pre-election campaign that she was prepared to issue an order for a nuclear strike.

💬 FM #Lavrov: The Western policy of total containment of Russia is extremely dangerous. It can eventually escalate into a direct armed confrontation between nuclear powers.

❗️ We continue to repeat time and again that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. pic.twitter.com/hauDXNppI0

— MFA Russia 🇷🇺 (@mfa_russia) December 28, 2022

Lavrov also highlighted the escalating rhetoric and hostility surrounding nuclear weapons. Everyone knows that the United States and its NATO partners’ strategic objective is to defeat Russia on the battlefield as a means of considerably weakening or even destroying our nation, he added.

In connection with this, he continued, “[Ukrainian President] Vladimir Zelensky had gone as far as urging NATO states to deliver preventive nuclear strikes against Russia. This crosses the line of what is acceptable. However, we heard far worse statements from figures within the [Kiev] regime.”  All of this, according to him, is a part of a US-NATO strategy to weaken and divide Russia.