Russia will achieve its ‘noble’ aims: Putin
Russian president said he is confident about the goals for what he called a ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine
MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin warned the West on Tuesday that attempts to isolate Moscow would fail, citing the success of the Soviet space programme as evidence that Russia could achieve spectacular leaps forward in tough conditions.
Russia says it will never again depend on the West after the United States and its allies imposed crippling sanctions on it to punish Putin for his February 24 order for what he called a “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Sixty one years to the day since the Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin blasted off into the history books by becoming the first man in space, Putin travelled to the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East, 5,550km east of Moscow.
“The sanctions were total, the isolation was complete but the Soviet Union was still first in space,” Putin said, according to Russian state television.
“We don’t intend to be isolated,” Putin said. “It is impossible to severely isolate anyone in the modern world - especially such a vast country as Russia.”
Russia’s Cold War space successes such as Gagarin’s flight and the 1957 launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite from earth, have a particular pertinence for Russia: both events shocked the United States. The launch of Sputnik 1 prompted the United States to create Nasa in a bid to catch up with Moscow.
Putin says the “special military operation” in Ukraine is necessary because the United States was using Ukraine to threaten Russia including via the Nato military alliance - and that Moscow had to defend Russianspeaking people in Ukraine from persecution.
He said on Tuesday that he had no doubts Russia would achieve all of its objectives in Ukraine - a conflict he cast as both inevitable and essential to defend Russia in the long term.
“Its goals are absolutely clear and noble,” Putin said. “It’s clear that we didn’t have a choice. It was the right decision.”
Ukrainian forces have mounted stiff resistance and the West has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in an effort to force it to withdraw its forces.
Russia’s economy is on track to contract by more than 10% in 2022, the biggest fall in gross domestic product since the years following the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, former finance minister Alexei Kudrin said on Tuesday.
Putin toured the space port in Russia’s Far East with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
“Why an earth are we getting so worried about these sanctions?” Lukashenko said, according to Russian state television.
Lukashenko, who has a track record of sometimes saying things that appear to jar with his closest ally’s stated positions on a range of issues, has insisted that Belarus must be involved in negotiations to resolve the conflict in Ukraine and has said that Belarus had been unfairly labelled “an accomplice of the aggressor”.
Closing in on Mariupol
Russian troops aimed to take control of the city of Mariupol on Tuesday, part of an anticipated massive onslaught across eastern Ukraine, as defending forces tried desperately to hold them back.
Russia is believed to be trying to connect occupied Crimea with Moscow-backed separatist territories Donetsk and Lugansk in Donbas, and has laid siege to the strategically located city.
“It is likely that in the future the enemy will try to take control of the city of Mariupol, capture Popasna and launch an offensive in the direction of Kurakhove in order to reach the administrative borders of Donetsk region,” the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Facebook.
The Russian defence ministry said its army had thwarted an attempt to break the siege with “airstrikes and artillery fire” at a factory in a northern district of the city. But the Ukrainian army insisted that “the defence of Mariupol continues”.
Meanwhile. Ukrainian prosecutors said on Tuesday that six people had been found shot dead in the basement of a building outside Kyiv, the latest discovery fuelling allegations of Russian atrocities.