Vladimir Putin will attack a Nato country next if he is “not stopped now and prevented from destroying Ukraine”, vocal critic Garry Kasparov has warned.
The Soviet-born former world chess champion and now political commentator said the Russian leader must be stopped because “the unthinkable is now the possible”, with the country trying to conquer abroad while becoming a police state at home.
Mr Kasparov, who was jailed for five days in 2007 while he was the leader of a political opposition coalition, painted a picture of Mr Putin as utterly ruthless, begging people not to describe him as president but as a dictator.
The West should send a clear message to Russian generals that “they will suffer annihilation if one inch of Nato is touched,” he advised.
He hit out at Russia’s bombardment of its neighbour just as the country’s forces were capturing the strategic Ukrainian port of Kherson on the Black Sea, and besieged Mariupol, on the Azov Sea, plunging it into darkness, with heavy fighting continuing.
The Kremlin said that Mr Putin told his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron on Thursday that his forces would achieve their goals in Ukraine whatever happens.
Mr Kasparov decried the destruction and slaughter of civilians as “part of Putin’s world war, a war on the civilised world of international law, democracy, and any threat to his power”.
He wrote on Twitter: “If Putin is not stopped now, not prevented from destroying Ukraine and committing genocide against its people, there will be a next time and it will be in Nato, with an unprecedented nuclear threat.”
Already fears are rising for the security of nations beyond Ukraine, because analysts fear Mr Putin will stop at nothing to push back against what he sees as Nato’s expansion.
Karin von Hippel, head of the Royal United Services Institute and a former senior adviser at the US State Department, told NBC that Russia could potentially target non-Nato nations, such as Moldova and Georgia.
She said that if the Russian leader “starts to slowly expand his empire, there will be several other places that are in Nato that are going to be getting extremely stressed out”.
The Ukraine war has led to a historic surge in support for Nato in Finland and Sweden, traditionally non-aligned countries.
Mr Kasparov claimed the free world’s “denial” of Mr Putin’s war and decades of appeasement allowed Putin to threaten and conquer abroad while turning Russia into a police state. “The price to stop him has gone up every time he has advanced unchallenged. Ukrainians are paying that price in blood,” he said.
Urging the West to be tougher on Russia, he added: “A dictator who has already crossed every line cannot be prevented from escalating with restraint. If he destroys Ukraine, he won’t stop.”
The only people who could really stop Putin were the Russian people, he said, from oligarchs to commanders to protesters. “Let all in the power vertical know they will be treated as war criminals. They are,” he said, warning that time is of the essence to stop payments and catch those in power and their assets before they hide.
Finland’s prime minister, Sanna Marin, said on Tuesday that the mindset of citizens and politicians towards joining the alliance was changing.
The Nato debate "is in full swing and will certainly intensify," Mr Marin said.
Mr Kasparov, one founder of political organisation the United Civil Front, has long been an arch-critic of the Russian leader. In 2006, he was a prime mover behind a broad coalition of political parties that formed the Other Russia, aimed at removing Putin from power.
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