President Putin plans to invade and take over Ukraine, Moldova, Poland, Hungary, East Germany all the Warsaw Pact

Vladimir Putin is hell-bent on restoring the old Warsaw Pact after subjugating all of Eastern Europe including Poland, Hungary and the former East Germany, says a Russian expert.

Professor Grigory Yudin says the dictator's imperialistic ambitions go even beyond recreating the Soviet Union as a single country, amid Putin's on-going invasion of Ukraine - a former Soviet state.

He also wants a new Iron Curtain with multiple free countries - including states in NATO and the EU - brought back under Moscow's hegemony.

The Warsaw Pact was a defence and security agreement that helped Moscow keep countries in Eastern Europe under its iron fist in the Soviet era.

In Putin's logic 'We cannot have the USSR and not have the Warsaw Pact', said Yudin. 'This kind of ideology [is what Putin thinks].'

He thinks of Poland, Hungary and others as 'toy countries - let them think they have sovereignty. But in reality they are, of course, our zone of control.'

Political scientist Yudin has warned previously that Putin is set on a 'big war' against NATO, in which swallowing Ukraine and Moldova are only the appetiser.

This is despite Russian forces so far being unable to take the town of Bakhmut despite losing tens of thousands of troops in bloody battles over many weeks.

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