MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign intelligence chief said on Tuesday (Dec 10) that Russia was close to achieving its goals in Ukraine with Moscow holding what he said was the strategic initiative in all areas in the war.
Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has left tens of thousands of dead, displaced millions and triggered the biggest crisis in relations between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
“The situation on the front is not in Kyiv’s favour,” Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), told Razvedchik, the official publication of the foreign intelligence agency.
“The strategic initiative in all areas belongs to us, we are close to achieving our goals, while the armed forces of Ukraine are on the verge of collapse,” Naryshkin said.
Naryshkin added that for Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had lost legitimacy and “the ability to negotiate”.
Naryshkin, who heads the main successor organisation to the Soviet-era KGB’s First Chief Directorate, is one of the few senior Russian officials to have relatively regular contacts with senior US and Western officials.
His views give an insight into thinking at the top levels of the Kremlin – which views the West’s support for Ukraine as evidence that the United States is fighting a proxy war against Russia aimed at toppling Moscow’s rulers.
US President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday called for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to end “the madness” of war.
Zelenskyy on Monday made the case for a diplomatic settlement to the war and raised the idea of foreign troops being deployed in Ukraine until it could join the NATO military alliance.
