National Post (National Edition)
Putin vows to persist with strikes in Ukraine
AMID CRITICISM
KYIV, UKRAINE • The Kremlin said Thursday it's up to Ukraine's president to end the military conflict in the country, suggesting terms that Kyiv has repeatedly rejected, while Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to press on with the fighting despite Western criticism.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “(Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelenskyy knows when it may end. It may end tomorrow if he wishes so.”
The Ukraine war has deteriorated relations between Russia and much of the rest of the world, but limited co-operation continues in some areas, such as exchanges of prisoners. On Thursday, in a dramatic swap that had been in the making for months, Russia freed American basketball star Brittney Griner while the United States released a jailed Russian arms dealer.
The Kremlin has long said that Ukraine must accept Russian conditions to end the fighting, now in its tenth month. It has demanded that Kyiv recognize Crimea — a Ukrainian peninsula that Moscow illegally annexed in 2014 — as part of Russia and also accept Moscow's other land gains in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials have repeatedly rejected those conditions, saying the war will end when the occupied territories are retaken or Russian forces leave them.
In an acknowledgment that it's taking longer than he expected to achieve his goals in the conflict, Putin recognized Wednesday that the fighting in Ukraine “could be a lengthy process.” He described Moscow's land gains as “a significant result for Russia,” saying — for example — that the Sea of Azov “has become Russia's internal sea.”
During a conference call with reporters, Peskov said Moscow wasn't aiming to grab new land but will try to regain control of areas in Ukraine from which it withdrew just weeks after incorporating them into Russia in hastily called referendums — which Ukraine and the West reject as illegal shams. After earlier retreats from the Kyiv and Kharkiv areas, last month Russian troops left the city of Kherson and parts of the Kherson region, one of the four illegally annexed Ukrainian regions.
“There are occupied territories in several new regions of the Russian Federation that need to be liberated,” Peskov said.
Putin vowed Thursday to achieve the declared goals in Ukraine regardless of the Western reaction.
“It's enough for us to make a move and there is a lot of noise, chatter and outcry all across the universe,” Putin said. “It will not obstruct us from fulfilling combat tasks.”
He described a series of Russian strikes on Ukraine's energy facilities and other key infrastructure as a legitimate response to an Oct. 8 truck bombing of a key bridge linking Crimea with Russia's mainland, and other attacks the Kremlin claimed Ukraine carried out.