Blustery Putin tells Ukraine: Accept our terms or else
MOSCOW (AP) — With Russia’s military action in Ukraine in its fifth month, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday warned Kyiv that it should quickly accept Moscow’s terms or brace for the worst, adding ominously that Russia has barely started its action.
Speaking at a meeting with leaders of the Kremlin-controlled parliament, Putin accused Western allies of fueling the hostilities, charging that “the West wants to fight us until the last Ukrainian.”
“It’s a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but it looks like it’s heading in that direction,” he added.
“Everybody should know that largely speaking, we haven’t even yet started anything in earnest,” Putin said in a menacing note.
He declared that Russia remains ready to sit down for talks to end the fighting, adding that “those who refuse to do so should know that the longer it lasts the more difficult it will be for them to make a deal with us.”
“We are hearing that they want to defeat us on the battlefield,” Putin said. “Let them try.”
Earlier in the conflict, the Kremlin demanded that Kyiv acknowledge Russian sovereignty over the Crimea peninsula it annexed from Ukraine in 2014 and recognize the independence of Moscow-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine. Moscow also said it expected Ukraine to bow to the existing situation on the ground, a reference to other land gains it has made.
After failing to capture Kyiv and other big cities in Ukraine’s northeast early in the campaign, the Russian military shifted its focus to Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland of Donbas where Moscow-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian troops since 2014.
Earlier this week, the Russian military claimed control of the Luhansk province, one of the two regions that make up Donbas, and is preparing to press its offensive into the second one, the Donetsk region.
In the early stages of the conflict, Russia won control of the southern
Kherson region and part of neighbouring Zaporizhzhia. Moscow is expected to try to eventually cut Ukraine off from its Black Sea coast all the way to the Romanian border. If that succeeded, it would deal a crushing blow to the Ukrainian economy and also create a corridor to Moldova’s separatist region of Transnistria that hosts a Russian military base.
Putin reaffirmed his long-held claim that the West using the conflict in Ukraine to try to isolate and weaken Russia.
“They simply don’t need such a country as Russia,” Putin said. “This is why they have used terrorism, separatism and internal destructive forces in our country.”
He charged that Western sanctions against Russia have failed to achieve their goal of “sowing division and strife in our society and demoralizing our people.”
“The course of history is unstoppable, and attempts by the collective West to enforce its version of the global order are doomed to fail,” Putin said.
Foreign analysts say Russia may be temporarily easing its offensive in eastern Ukraine as the Russian military attempts to reassemble its forces for a significant new offensive.
On Wednesday, Russian forces made no claimed or assessed territorial gains in Ukraine “for the first time in 133 days of war,” according to the Institute for the Study of War. The think tank based in Washington suggested that Moscow may be taking an “operational pause,” but said that does not entail “the complete cessation of active hostilities.”
“Russian forces will likely confine themselves to relatively small-scale offensive actions as they attempt to set conditions for more significant offensive operations and rebuild the combat power needed to attempt those more ambitious undertakings,” the institute said.
A Thursday statement from Russia’s Defense Ministry seemed to confirm that assessment. It said Russian military units involved in combat in Ukraine had been given time to rest.
“The units that performed combat missions during the special military operation are taking measures to recover their combat capabilities. The servicemen are given the opportunity to rest, receive letters and parcels from home,” read the statement, quoted by Russian state news agency Tass.
Shelling continued in Ukraine’s east, where at least nine civilians were killed and six wounded in 24 hours, Ukrainian officials said early Thursday.
Ukraine’s presidential office said in its morning update that cities and villages in seven of the country’s regions were shelled in the past day. Most of the civilian deaths occurred in Donetsk province, where fighting is ongoing. Seven civilians were killed there, including a child, the presidential office said.
Later Thursday, a missile hit a residential area in the Donetsk city of Kramatorsk, killing one civilian and injuring at least six, officials said. Cars and broken trees smouldered at the scene of the strike, which left a crater in the centre of a courtyard.