Moscow, Dec 14 (EFE).- President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that peace would only come after Russia achieved its objectives in Ukraine, a stance unchanged since the military campaign began in February 2022.
Putin was speaking to reporters at his end-of-year news conference, his first since Russia began its full-scale war on Ukraine, with the conflict just two months shy of its second anniversary.
“There will be peace when we achieve our goals. Let us return to these goals. They have not changed,” the Russian president said.
He recalled the terms that he used to justify the military offensive at the start of the war: the “denazification” of Ukraine, its “demilitarization,” and guarantees of its “neutral status.”
Putin reiterated his oft-repeated claim that NATO and the allied Western forces compelled him to invade Ukraine.
“The unbridled desire to creep towards our borders, taking Ukraine into NATO, all this led to this tragedy. Plus the bloody events in Donbas for eight years….All this led to the tragedy that we are now experiencing.”
He said what the United States conceived and organized, Europe stood and silently watched, or played and sang along with them. “Well, how can we build relations with them?”
He said the fundamental conditions would be in place to restore full-fledged ties when “internal changes happen (in the US) and when they start respecting other people, other countries.”
He said the US and its Western allies should “start looking for compromise instead of trying to resolve their issues with sanctions and military intervention. So far, such conditions are not in place, but we are ready for that.”
Putin highlighted Ukraine’s dependence on allied-supplied weaponry, expressing his belief that the arrangement may soon end for the war-battered Kyiv. “This bargain may end one day. And apparently, it is ending.”
The Russian president took a swipe at the counteroffensive, saying Ukraine was “just sending their men out to be destroyed.”
“The enemy announced a big counteroffensive. None of it worked anywhere. I don’t even know why they do this. It’s a one-way ticket.”
He said the last Ukrainian operation within the framework of the counteroffensive was the “landing attempt” on the left bank of the Dnieper River.
The Ukrainian soldiers who managed to cross the river are now surrounded, he said.
He said he would be honest in noting that It was “in our best interest” that they sent their military personnel there. “Unfortunately, the logic of armed struggles is like that.”
The head of the Kremlin said currently 617,000 Russian soldiers are in Ukraine, who have managed to fortify their positions “almost along the entire front line,” which is now “more than 2,000 km.”
Addressing rumors of a new mobilization in Russia, Putin asserted that there was no need, citing the previous recruitment of contract soldiers after a partial mobilization in September 2022. EFE
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