Boris Johnson has called Vladimir Putin a “fucking idiot” over his “barbaric” behaviour in eastern Europe.
Speaking to the Baltic news website Delfi, the former UK PM said: “What Putin is doing is archaic, and barbaric.
“And he needs to understand that Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania – none of these countries are part of the Russian Imperium anymore. And nor is Ukraine.
“It’s over. Over, over, over. No more empire, Vladimir, you fucking idiot.
“Excuse my language.”
The ex-MP has been a vocal supporter of Ukraine since his time in office, and subsequently has a town square named after him in the Ukrainian village of Tsyrkuny.
His strong language comes as Russia continues to push forward in Ukraine in a bid to seize as much land as possible before Donald Trump takes office on January 20.
The president-elect has promised to negotiate a peace deal between the two countries within his first days in office, but has not said how – sparking fears he may try to push Kyiv to cede occupied territory to Moscow.
The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) said in its latest update on X that Russia is making “grinding progress” in some parts of the northern Donetsk region even as they are “frequently targeted by Ukrainian UAV operators.
It added: “Russian forces have been attempting to interdict Ukrainian logistics routes in and out of these towns.”
However, over in the Ukraine-occupied Russian region of Kursk, president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that for the first time, two North Korean soldiers fighting for Putin had been captured.
“Our soldiers have captured North Korean military personnel in the Kursk region. Two soldiers, though wounded, survived and were transported to Kyiv, where they are now communicating with the Security Service of Ukraine,” he said in a statement on X on Saturday.
He added: “This was not an easy task: Russian forces and other North Korean military personnel usually execute their wounded to erase any evidence of North Korea’s involvement in the war against Ukraine.”
An estimated 11,000 North Korean troops are said to have been deploying in the Russian region to fight Ukraine.
According to the US, more than 1,000 were killed or wounded in the last week of December.