McCain: Mariupol might be Putin's next target

US Senator John McCain (R) has warned that Putin is preparing to strike Ukraine's port city of Mariupol.

McCain also said that Putin is preparing to deliver a blow to Moldova and put pressure on the Baltic states as well as Poland.

The Republican Senator made the comments during a speech at the Washington Center for Strategic and International Studies where he reminded the audience that Putin is interested in creating a land corridor from Russia to Crimea. To do so, Russia would need to take Mariupol, Censor.NET reports.

McCain also stated that there are currently 14,000 of Russian peacekeepers in Moldova and Transnistria, so Putin might as well be thinking of seizing those territories, too. Russian president is pressurizing on the Baltic states, thus he would not stop in Ukraine and Crimea, McCain said. The senator also noted that the price Putin paid for his grabbing is nothing if compared to what he got.

According to McCain, the Kremlin began a propaganda campaign in the Baltic States. Vladimir Putin is currently in a very effective propaganda campaign, which is designed for the Russian-speaking inhabitants of the Baltic states, Moldova and other countries, and the United States does not counteract it, he noted. He said that the U.S. seemed to have stuck in the Cold War times, when radio was the only medium.

In addition, the Republican senator believes that Putin's next target would be Ukraine's Mariupol. McCain has once again said he believed the U.S. sanctions against Russia to be insufficient, and the very policy of the U.S. as encouraging Putin.