WAR
Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has left tens of thousands dead, displaced millions and triggered the biggest crisis in relations between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Russia, which casts the conflict as a defensive special military operation designed to stop dangerous NATO expansion to the east, controls around a fifth of Ukraine and has taken several thousand sq km of territory this year.
Determined to incorporate four Ukrainian regions into Russia, Moscow’s forces have taken village after village in the east and are now threatening strategically important cities such as Pokrovsk, a major road and rail hub.
Putin said the fighting was complex, so it was “difficult and pointless to guess what lies ahead … (but) we are moving, as you said, towards solving our primary tasks, which we outlined at the beginning of the special military operation”.
Discussing the continued presence of Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region, Putin said Kyiv’s troops would definitely be forced out but declined to say exactly when that would happen.
The war has transformed the Russian economy and Putin said it was showing signs of overheating which was stoking worryingly high inflation. But he said growth was higher than many other economies such as Britain.
Asked if he’d do anything differently, he said he should have sent troops into Ukraine sooner than 2022 and that Russia should have been better prepared for the conflict.
Asked by a BBC reporter if he’d looked after Russia, something that Boris Yeltsin had asked him to do before handing over the presidency at the end of 1999, Putin said he had.
“We have moved back from the edge of the abyss,” Putin said.
“I have done everything to ensure that Russia is an independent and sovereign power that is able to make decisions in its own interests.”
Russia, Putin said, had made proposals to Syria’s new rulers about Russia’s military bases there and most people that Moscow had spoken to on the issue favoured them staying.
Russia would need to think about whether the bases should remain or not, he added, but rumours about the death of Russian influence in the Middle East were exaggerated.
Putin touted what he said was the invincibility of the “Oreshnik” hypersonic missile that Russia has already test-fired at a Ukrainian military factory, saying he was ready to organise another launch at Ukraine and see if Western air defence systems could shoot it down.
In Brussels, Zelenskiy addressed Putin’s missile suggestion during a press conference at a European Council meeting, remarking of Putin: “Do you think he is a sane person?”
