The Secretary of State of the United States, Antony Blinken, accused this Sunday of Vladimir Putin’s regime of using winter as a weapon in its invasion of Ukraine and rejected the attacks on infrastructure and energy sources in the European country.
In an interview with CBS, Blinken assured that the Russian president has rejected attempts at dialogue to end the conflict and instead has intensified his offensive.
Putin “doubled and tripled everything he was doing, mobilizing more forces, annexing territory in Ukraine and now trying to weaponize winter,” he said.
Blinken also stressed that because Putin “has not been able to win on the battlefield” now “is turning his anger against Ukrainian civilians” and attacks “the energy infrastructure, trying to turn off heating and electricity”.
Blinken spoke a day after the director of National Intelligence of the United States, Avril Haines, assured that the conflict in Ukraine will subside during the winter months, with the parties taking time to reconstitute and rearm for a new offensive in spring, according to US media.
“Honestly we see that there is already a slower pace in the conflict,” Haines said at a national defense forum in California.