London, March 30 (Agency) UK deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab on Wednesday said that word coming out of the mouth of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “war machine” can not be trusted and sanctions were needed to tighten the grip on it. Sky News quoted Raab as saying, “We judge the Russian military machine by its actions, not just its words. There’s obviously some scepticism that it will regroup, to attack again, rather than seriously engage in diplomacy or anything of that nature.
Of course, the door to diplomacy will always be left ajar. But I don’t think you can trust what is coming out to the mouth of Putin’s war machine.” He said that a whole range of possibilities need to be considered when dealing with Russia. “You’ve got the fact that they hire mercenaries, you’ve got the fact that engage in cyber, the fact that they engage in poisoning, we’ve seen that in the past as well. The whole gamut comes with Russia and that why it is such an unconventional adversary,” he added.
BBC Radio 4 quoted the Deputy PM as saying that the US sanctions against Russia will remain until the invasion of Ukraine is “withdrawn”. He said, “The sanctions are there to tighten the grip on Putin’s war machine. Until the invasion is withdrawn – and I think that would need to be either entirely or verifiably – I don’t think the sanctions can or should be lifted.” “We will consider anything that President Zelenskiy says he needs very carefully. But we are not going to, I think, replicate unilaterally the Nato commitments that apply to Nato members,” he emphasised.