Vladimir Putin's top female diplomat has hit back at Britain's defence secretary Ben Wallace after he called the pair "lunatics" and said the tyrant has "small man syndrome".
The Tory minister claimed that Russian's Maria Zakharova - who some see as a future Russian foreign minister- is “like a comedy turn", adding: “She does her statement every week, threatening to nuke everyone or doing something or another.”
Wallace cast doubt on Boris Johnson's theory yesterday that a woman was was less likely to embark “on a crazy, macho war of invasion and violence”, adding that Putin was “a perfect example of toxic masculinity”.
Instead, the defence secretary added fuel to the fire, saying Zakharova, 46, is, “definitely a woman ...
“She's a lunatic like [Putin] is, so I'll leave it at that.”
Zakharova, a keen advocate of Putin's war in Ukraine replied furiously, asking: “What’s up with the British government?
“What turns them on so much today about the subject of gender and sex?”
In a longer rant on her Telegram channel, she told her 415,000 followers: “Following his PM, the British Minister of Defence Wallace …. said 'MARIA ZAKHAROVA, WHILE CLEARLY BEING A WOMAN, WEEKLY THREATENS TO BOMBARD EVERYONE WITH NUCLEAR BOMBS'.
“Next he went on about the subjects of sleepwalking, comedy and machismo…
“British minister Wallace: unless you want to be seen by the entire world as a complete liar, give us an example of how I ‘weekly threaten to bombard everyone with nuclear bombs’.
"And given you won’t be able to find a single quote, I accuse you of slander and spreading fakes.
“But the key thing was that Mr Wallace recognised an important fact: Russian women for him are still women, not ‘persons with ….’."
“I take this opportunity to say ‘Hi’ to J.K. Rowling," she said, after the Harry Potter author was accused of transphobia after mocking the phrase 'people who menstruate'.
“She isn’t allowed to be a woman while I am - Minister of Defence Wallace himself permitted it,” Zakharova added.
This comes following a warning that Putin still wants most of Ukraine, according to a U.S. intelligence chief.
Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, said Wednesday that the four-month war will continue grind on, "for an extended period of time."
"In short, the picture remains pretty grim and Russia's attitude toward the West is hardening," Haines told a Commerce Department conference.
"We think he [Putin] has effectively the same political goals that we had previously, which is to say that he wants to take most of Ukraine," she added.
After the invasion in February, Conservative MP Julian Lewis said Putin was "firmly in the grip of small man syndrome" in the House of Commons.
He also said that Putin had a "Napoleon complex".
Lewis said that this could be the reason why Putin ordered his troops to take to the streets of Ukraine.
And then former Labour leader Brown, who served as the UK's Chancellor from 1997 to 2007 under then-PM Tony Blair, has shed some light on the realities of this rumour.
