Vladimir Putin wants to reassure. Speaking at a press conference after a regional summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, the Russian president assured that Russia “is not aiming to destroy Ukraine”, where it has been carrying out an offensive since February 24 . “In the immediate future, there is no need for massive strikes. Currently, there are other objectives. For the moment, after we will see,” he said, assuring that Russia was doing “just right” in Ukraine.
“It’s not nice what’s happening now, but (if Russia hadn’t attacked Ukraine on February 24), we would have been in the same situation a little later, just the conditions would have been worse for us. So we are doing everything right,” continued the Russian president.
Bombings that damaged electrical infrastructure
Russia had carried out massive bombings of Ukrainian cities on Monday, damaging both electrical infrastructure and residential areas or even a playground in kyiv. These strikes came two days after the explosion on the Russian Crimean bridge, a key infrastructure, which Vladimir Putin attributed to the Ukrainian secret service. Vladimir Putin also said on Friday that he did not foresee a new wave of mobilization of Russians in the army, while acknowledging that the current one had experienced failures.
Putin doesn’t see ‘the need’ for talks with Biden
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that he saw no point in holding talks with his American counterpart Joe Biden, even within the framework of the G20 summit scheduled for Indonesia in November. “I don’t see the need for it, there is currently no negotiating platform,” he said at a press conference after a regional summit in Astana, Kazakhstan.
“We have to ask him if he is ready to conduct such negotiations with me or not,” he said of the American president.
According to him, 222,000 men out of the 300,000 planned have been recruited, of whom 16,000 are already in “units involved in combat”. “Nothing else is planned. No proposals have been received from the Ministry of Defense and I do not see the need for them in the foreseeable future,” Vladimir Putin told a press conference, adding predict the end of the mobilization “in about two weeks”.
Putin “open” to negotiations with kyiv
“The front line is 1,100 km long, so it is almost impossible to hold it exclusively by troops made up of soldiers under contract”, justified the Russian president, while the announcement of the mobilization pushed tens of thousands of Russians to flee the country.
Vladimir Putin also said he was “open” to negotiations with kyiv and to mediation by countries such as Turkey or the United Arab Emirates, criticizing kyiv for its refusal to start talks with him. The Russian president has for the first time acknowledged that Moscow’s partners in the former USSR were “concerned” about the conflict in Ukraine.