Austria’s chancellor visited Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday — the first Western leader to see him in person since the Ukraine invasion — and said he came away feeling not only pessimistic about peace prospects but fearing that Putin intended to drastically intensify the brutality of the war.
Describing Putin as dismissive of atrocities in Ukraine, the visiting chancellor, Karl Nehammer, said it was clear that Russian forces were mobilizing for a large-scale assault in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, the next phase of a war now in its seventh week.
"The battle being threatened cannot be underestimated in its violence,” Nehammer said in a news conference after the 75-minute meeting at Putin’s residence outside Moscow, which the visitor described as blunt and direct.