Vladimir Putin This Thursday he issued one of his most forceful warnings since the beginning of the invasion. During an official visit to Kyrgyzstan, the Russian president assured that Moscow will only stop its offensive if Ukraine completely abandons the areas that the Kremlin claims as its own. If not, he stated, Russia is willing to take them “by military means.”
The Russian leader once again claimed the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia as “Russian” territoriesannexed after referendums denounced by kyiv and the West as a farce. Although Moscow controls Luhansk and Crimea almost entirely, its presence in the other regions is partial and is equivalent to around 20% of the Ukrainian surface.
Putin further maintained that His troops would have surrounded Ukrainian units in Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad, in Donetsk, two cities located on one of the harshest fronts of the war. “Krasnoarmeysk and Dimitrov are completely surrounded,” he said, rescuing the Soviet nomenclature. kyiv rejects this version and assures that its soldiers continue to resist in the area.
The president He also listed alleged advances in Vovchansk (Kharkov), Siversk (Donetsk) and in the direction of Hulyaipolea key enclave in Zaporizhia. In his opinion, the Russian offensive is now “impossible to stop” and Ukraine can barely “do anything” to reverse it.
In parallel, Putin opened the door to considering the 28-point peace plan promoted by the United States as a preliminary basis for future negotiations. As he explained, Moscow has already received a revised version of the document and sees it possible that this outline could serve as a starting point, although he insisted that There is still no negotiated text or closed agreements.
The Russian president maintained that Washington “seems to take into account” the positions raised by Moscow after the recent rounds of contacts and that, sooner or later, both sides They will have to “sit down and be serious” to translate their positions into diplomatic language.
As a message to Europe, Putin denied having offensive ambitions beyond Ukraine and said he was even willing to put in writing a commitment of non-aggression with European countries. Minimizing the Russian threat, he added, would serve to stop the “hysteria” that, according to him, governments and industrial sectors fuel for political or economic purposes. “We have no aggressive plans for Europe,” he insisted.
