Former Ukrainian president says Russia will end up like ‘great North Korea’ if Putin doesn’t go

Petro Poroshenko, who held office between 2014 and 2019, called on world leaders to “deputinize” Russia and urged the Russian public to “do their best to save Russia.”

A former Ukrainian president says Russia is on track to become a “very, very big North Korea” if Vladimir Putin doesn’t dump it.

Petro Poroshenko, who held office between 2014 and 2019, said he had extensive dealings with the Russian president – but said the Russian leader never kept his promises.

Mr Poroshenko said ordinary Russians would soon feel the effects of devastating sanctions, adding he was “absolutely confident that Russia faces the fate of a very, very big North Korea.”

In an interview with Newsweek, he said world leaders must commit to “deputinizing Russia.”

Comparing Russia to Kim Jong-un’s regime in North Korea, he said citizens had “no freedom, a dictatorship, full control of the mass media, unhappy and poor people”.

He said sanctions would be “disastrous” for the general public in Russia, who have been “poisoned” by propaganda on TV.

But he continued: “You should pay the price for it.

“Learn the lessons, stop the aggression, give back Ukrainian soil, and then do your best to save Russia.”

The former Ukrainian president urged leaders not to trust Putin.

He said: “Nothing he promised has actually been implemented. Don’t be afraid of Putin. Putin will go as far as we allow him to.”

Mr Poroshenko said that this would either end in Ukraine’s victory, which would be “the whole world’s victory”, or with “the whole world’s surrender to Putin”.

However, he added that he doesn’t think the second scenario will materialize.

Vladimir Putin issued a chilling warning earlier today, claiming that Russia had successfully launched a giant intercontinental ballistic missile called Satan-2.

The Russian president boasted that the new Sarmat ICBM would give “food for thought” to anyone thinking of threatening Moscow.

He claimed no nation in the world would be able to stop the newly tested weapon, which experts believe is capable of firing more than 10 nuclear warheads at once.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the weapon was launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the north-west of the country and successfully hit targets in the Far East.

In a video released by Moscow, the rocket was seen amid huge rocket flames and smoke from an underground silo.

Putin, who is under investigation for war crimes committed by his armed forces in Ukraine, reportedly claimed the missile would “bolster the combat potential of our armed forces.”