Moscow (Ukraine) - (AFP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday threatened the West to "respond" to Ukraine's supply of advanced tanks, in a threat that comes amid speculation about a new Russian military escalation.

At a ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over the German army in Stalingrad, Putin said, "Those who drag European countries, including Germany, into a new war against Russia and irresponsibly present this as a fait accompli, and those who expect Russia's defeat in The battlefield, they clearly don't understand that a contemporary war with Russia would be very different."

And the Russian president added, "We do not send our tanks to their borders, but we have something to respond to them with, and this matter will not be limited to the use of armored vehicles."

For his part, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia "will use all its capabilities" to respond to Western arms supplies to Ukraine.

Last fall, Putin made similar statements that were interpreted as a threat to use nuclear weapons.

"When new weapons from the 'collective West' appear, Russia will use all the capabilities it has to respond" to such arms supplies, Peskov said.

In his speech delivered Thursday in Volgograd, a city located in the southwest of the country that was formerly called Stalingrad, the Russian president considered that history repeats itself, likening the war that his forces are waging in Ukraine to that of the Soviet forces against the Nazi army.

"It's incredible, but true. We are again threatened by German Leopard tanks (...) Once again, Hitler's successors want to fight Russia on Ukrainian soil using 'Bandervotsy'," Putin said, as the supporters of Ukrainian ultra-nationalist Stepan Bandera ( 1909-1959) who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.

Since his forces began invading Ukraine on February 24, Putin has been calling the authorities in Kiev "neo-Nazis" who are committing "genocide" against the Russian-speaking population in the east of the country.

After Berlin gave it the green light, several Western countries pledged to supply Ukraine with heavy German-made Leopard-2 tanks, and Germany itself committed to providing a number of these tanks to Kiev.

After long procrastination for fear of escalating the conflict, the West finally agreed to send modern tanks to Ukraine, such as the German Leopard-2, the American Abrams, and the British Challenger.

However, Kiev has not yet obtained any commitment to provide it with high-precision missiles with a range of more than 100 km, which it says its forces need to strike the rear lines of the Russian forces.

Many observers believe that both Kiev and Moscow are planning new offensives as winter ends and spring arrives.

Following a series of humiliating field setbacks in the fall, Russian forces massed hundreds of thousands of reservists and stepped up their ground offensives, particularly in eastern Ukraine.

On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky followed the example of his defense minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, by saying that Russia is preparing to launch a new major offensive, on February 24, the first anniversary of the start of the invasion.

Zelensky said during a joint press conference in Kiev with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, "Russia is mobilizing its forces, we all know that. It wants revenge not only on Ukraine, but also on free Europe."

On Wednesday, the Ukrainian Defense Minister warned that Moscow was preparing "very seriously (...) to try something by February 24."

In recent weeks, the Russian army has made some field gains around Bakhmut, the city in eastern Ukraine that Moscow has been trying to capture since the summer.

In Bakhmut, which turned into a ghost town, 75-year-old Natalya Shevchenko told AFP, "Forget about gas. If we had electricity, everything would be easier. We would have heating and the ability to cook."

"The worst is that there is no (phone) coverage. I cannot call my family," she added.

However, this old woman still resides in her house, despite the fact that the continuous bombing has forced her to live underground in the basement of her house "like a mole".

In Kiev, von der Leyen announced that the European Union intends to impose sanctions on Moscow on the first anniversary of the start of the invasion, stressing that Russia is losing 160 million euros per day due to setting a ceiling on the price of its oil.
The European official did not give any details about the upcoming sanctions.

For his part, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in a television interview, accused the Europeans of seeking a "final solution to the Russian issue."

Lavrov said that von der Leyen "declared that the outcome of the war should be Russia's defeat (...) so that it would not recover for decades," asking, "Isn't this racism, Nazism, and an attempt to solve the Russian question?", likening it to "the final solution to the Jewish question." The Holocaust orchestrated by the Nazis.

For his part, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said that he did not rule out supplying combat aircraft to Ukraine, but considered that this equipment is not a "magic wand" capable of quickly changing the course of the war.

In Vienna, parliamentarians from twenty countries expressed their desire to ban the participation of the Russian delegation in the meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to be held at the end of the month in the Austrian capital.