"The Tower of Babel of the EU has to be destroyed."

16:27, Sun, Dec 28, 2025 Updated: 16:30, Sun, Dec 28, 2025

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Russian President Vladimir Putin (Image: Getty)

A political scientist said that, according to the majority of the Russian population, Europe, including the UK, and Ukraine, should have been "turned into a pile of smoking, radioactive ashes."

Sergey Mikheyev, speaking at a Russian state TV programme heavily controlled by the Kremlin, said: "If we held a referendum on our military policy, and asked Russians what should have happened, Europe and Ukraine would have been turned into a pile of smoking, radioactive ashes a long time ago."

He also added: "Burn everything down, so they cannot open their mouths again. Yes, there are people with different opinions, but this is the opinion of the majority. Our most important political task is to convince them that it [a war] won't happen with the same parameters as the Ukrainian one, but it would be a catastrophe."

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Mikheyev also added that it would be better for Russia if the European Union didn't exist and it would be more beneficial for the country to have bilateral relationships with individual European countries. "The Tower of Babel of the EU has to be destroyed," he also said.

Meanwhile, Putin has sent a chilling warning that Russia is prepared to use “armed force” if Ukraine does not surrender to his territorial demands just hours before Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky engage in crunch peace talks. The Ukraine President is to meet his US counterpart today about security guarantees at Mar-a-Lago in Florida to seek a resolution to the conflict.

Zelensky is expected to discuss territorial disputes over Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia during talks with President Trump and go through specific points of a 20-point peace plan. But Putin has now threatened that the bloodshed will continue if Ukraine fails to meet Moscow’s territorial demands.

The Russian leader said: “If the Kyiv authorities do not want to end the matter peacefully, we will resolve all the tasks facing us in the course of the special military operation using armed force.”

Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky are set to meet in Florida on Sunday (December 28) for face-to-face talks on ending the nearly four-year war between Russia and Ukraine.

Today's meeting will mark the fifth time Zelensky has travelled to meet Trump in the U.S. The most notorious meeting came on February 28, 2025 at the Oval Office in Washington, D.C.

This high-profile encounter was publicly televised and was intended to culminate in agreements on cooperation and support. However, the tone soon became confrontational. Trump shouted that Ukraine was “gambling with World War III” and accused Zelensky of not showing enough gratitude for U.S. aid.