Locals roam the Chechan capital after heavy Russian bombardments (Image: Sygma via Getty Images/Antoine Gyori)

Overnight UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin might try to “Grozny-fy” Kyiv and reduce Ukraine’s capital city to rubble.

In 2003 the United Nations called Grozny the “most destroyed city on earth” after the Chechen city was heavily targeted by Russian forces during the first and second Chechen wars. The sieges and assaults in both wars left it devastated. It is estimated that between 5000 and 8000 people died in the bloodiest episode of the second Chechen war which lasted from late 1999 to early 2000, and two years later not a single building in the city was undamaged. 

Johnson’s comments came in an ITV interview in Tallinn during a trip to Poland and Estonia for crisis talks over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. From Tallinn, Johnson warned that Putin’s actions and the swift and public international pushback has left the Russian president in a “cul-de-sac” and that it was going to be “very difficult for him to back out”.

“If you’re sitting where he is, his only instinct is going to be to double down and to try and ‘Grozny-fy’ Kyiv, if you know what I mean. And to reduce it to [rubble],” he said.

He also issued a plea of wisdom to Putin to “put those tanks into reverse or turn them round” lest he commit an “unalterable moral humanitarian catastrophe”.