Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened Wednesday to deliver weapons to third countries that could hit Western interests if the West allows Ukraine to strike Russia with its long-range missiles. These comments come as the West begins to authorize strikes on Russian territory, under certain conditions, with weapons supplied to kyiv. Ukraine has been demanding this right for months. For Mr. Putin, if long-range missiles requiring the assistance of Western military personnel were fired against targets in Russia in the future, Moscow would respond.
“If someone considers it possible to supply such weapons in the combat zone to strike our territory (…), why should we not have the right to supply our weapons of the same type to regions of the world where there will be hit the sensitive installations of the countries which act in this way against Russia?”, launched Mr. Putin during a long interview with press agencies, including AFP. Many Western states are opposed to the use of their weapons on Russian territory, particularly long-range, high-precision missiles, fearing that this could push Moscow into escalation.
Western military instructors “are already in Ukraine, and suffering losses there”
The Russian president also reaffirmed that Western military instructors “are already in Ukraine, and are suffering losses there” which they are keeping secret. “They are present on the territory of Ukraine and, unfortunately for them, they are suffering losses. The United States and European states prefer to remain silent,” he said during this meeting organized on the sidelines of the Economic Forum in St. Petersburg (northwest Russia). France recently announced that it was considering sending military instructors to Ukraine to accelerate the training of Ukrainian soldiers and the formation of a European coalition for this purpose.
Mr. Putin had already affirmed last week that Western instructors were in Ukraine, “under the guise of mercenaries” fighting alongside Ukrainian forces. Other countries such as the United States have ruled out sending instructors and no state has reported the presence of its military in Ukraine. Throughout the meeting, the Russian leader reiterated his arguments that Russia was willing to come to the negotiating table, and that the best way to stop the war was for the West to “stop delivering weapons ” to Ukraine.
“Providing weapons to a conflict zone is always a bad thing. Especially when it is linked to the fact that suppliers not only supply weapons, but control them. This is a measure very serious and very dangerous,” he said. He also refused to quantify the losses suffered by the Russian army in nearly two and a half years of conflict, simply stating that they were “much lower” than Ukrainian losses, with “a ratio of one to five.” “If we talk about irreparable losses (deaths), then the ratio is one to five” in comparison with the losses suffered on the Ukrainian side, he said.
He assured that the ratio between the losses of the two armies was comparable to the difference between the number of prisoners taken by each side. According to him, Russia currently holds 6,465 Ukrainian soldiers, compared to 1,348 Russian soldiers in Ukrainian hands. Since the start of the assault on Ukraine in February 2022, many Western experts have spoken of several tens of thousands of Russian soldiers killed.
No figures on losses
The BBC and the independent Russian media Mediazona, for their part, claim to have verified the deaths of at least 50,000 Russian soldiers. During this first press conference with Western media since December, Vladimir Putin also assured that Russia was ready to collaborate in a French investigation into the death of AFP journalist Arman Soldin, killed on May 9, 2023 in Ukraine, probably by Russian fire. “We are ready to organize this work, I don’t know how it can be done in practice if this person died in a combat zone, but we will do everything that depends on us,” he said. The Kremlin had previously indicated that Russia could not investigate, arguing that the area where the journalist was killed was territory under Ukrainian control.
The national anti-terrorism prosecution in France has opened a preliminary investigation for war crimes to determine the circumstances of the death of Arman Soldin and the origin of the shots. Arman Soldin, who was AFP’s video coordinator in Ukraine, died at age 32 during a rocket attack in Chassiv Yar, Donbass, while covering the particularly bloody battle of Bakhmut. The city was conquered at the end of May 2023 by Russia, after more than nine months of fighting. Russia is still on the offensive in this area, and is now at the gates of Chassiv Yar.
A “total annihilation of the civilian population” in Gaza
Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced on Wednesday a “total annihilation of the civilian population” in Gaza, where Israel has been waging a war against Hamas for nine months after an unprecedented attack by the Islamist movement on Israeli soil on October 7. “What is currently happening in Gaza in response to the terrorist attack on Israel does not resemble a war at all. It is a kind of total annihilation of the civilian population,” Mr. Putin said during a meeting with press agencies, including AFP.
“We are trying (…) to influence as much as possible” with a view to a settlement of the conflict, “including on the humanitarian aspect,” continued Mr. Putin. He said the Israel-Hamas conflict was “the result of the policies of the United States, which monopolized the Israeli-Palestinian settlement and set aside all the tools previously created to collectively attempt to resolve these very complex issues.” Russia traditionally maintains good relations with both the Palestinian Authority, Arab countries and Israel, although relations with the latter have cooled in the past two years. Moscow believes that the creation of a Palestinian state is the “most credible” solution to the war between Israel and Hamas.
“No imperial ambitions”
Russian President Vladimir Putin assured Wednesday that his country had no “imperial ambitions” and was not planning to attack NATO, more than two years after the start of the offensive against Ukraine. “Do not look for what does not exist (…) do not look for our imperial ambitions. They do not exist,” declared Mr. Putin during a meeting with news agencies, in response to a question from AFP on the presence of the flags of contemporary Russia, Imperial Russia and the USSR in front of the Gazprom headquarters where the meeting with journalists took place. Mr. Putin then took the opportunity to denounce the West who accuse him of wanting a military confrontation with NATO, and of therefore having to prepare for it.
“We are making up that Russia wants to attack NATO (…) Who invented this nonsense? Bullshit,” he raged. Moscow denied for months that it was preparing a military offensive against Ukraine, before finally launching its assault on February 24, 2022, accusing the West of wanting to use their Ukrainian ally to weaken or even destroy Russia. And if the Kremlin denies wanting to recreate its lost empire, Moscow has annexed five Ukrainian regions and a number of Russian officials, Mr. Putin included, point to the fact that these belonged to the Russian and Soviet empires.