The activity of the Russian Army in Ukraine and the fighting cannot stop as long as Kyiv maintains the counteroffensive in the south and east of the country, the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, assured this Tuesday. According to the head of the Kremlin, it is up to the Ukrainian authorities to stop and “publicly say” that they want to negotiate.
Sitting down to negotiate to seek a solution to the conflict is not possible as long as Kyiv does not revoke the presidential decree that prohibits it from negotiating with Russia, Putin said in a speech before the Eastern Economic Forum, which is being held in Vladivostok.
In February 2022, Putin sent the Russian Army to Ukraine in what he called a “special military operation.” The most serious armed conflict in Europe since the Second World War then began.
In this situation, more than 18 months of hostilities, in Vladivostok he was asked about the perception of Russia as a colonial power in relation to the Soviet Union’s decision to send tanks in 1956 to Budapest (Hungary) and in 1968 to Prague (then capital of the former Czechoslovakia). The Russian president replied: “It is not right to do anything in foreign policy that harms the interests of other peoples.”
And he even compared those events with today, but in reference to the United States, not to Russia or its policy towards its Ukrainian neighbor. According to him, the US is making the same mistakes as the Soviet Union. Washington “has no friends, only interests,” he said.
At least 2,600 Hungarians and 600 Soviet soldiers died after the Hungarian uprising of 1956, crushed by Moscow tanks. The Prague Spring of 1968 ended when Soviet-led Warsaw Pact forces invaded the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. There were about 137 Czechoslovaks killed.
Putin took the opportunity to say in Vladivostok that the Ukrainian counteroffensive “has failed,” a message he has repeated several times since Kyiv began the counterattack last June with the aim of expelling Russian troops from the country.
The Ukrainians “have losses, and many,” he said. According to Putin, since the start of the counteroffensive, Kyiv has lost 71,500 men in combat. “As for tanks, they have lost 543 tanks and nearly 18,000 armored vehicles of all types,” he added. The counteroffensive, he summarized, “has no results.”
He also asserted that future supplies of Western weapons to the Ukrainian Army, cluster bombs and F-16 fighters, will not change anything. They will only “prolong the conflict,” he said.
Touching on another topic, according to the Russian leader “it is unlikely that the situation in Ukraine and relations between Moscow and Washington will substantially change” if Donald Trump wins the United States elections next year.
“I believe there will be no fundamental changes in the direction of US foreign policy toward Russia, no matter who is elected president,” he said.
He confessed that in Moscow they are glad that Trump says that “he will solve urgent problems in a few days, including the crisis in Ukraine.” But he recalled that it was Trump who imposed the most sanctions on Russia. “There they accused him of having special ties with Russia, which is complete nonsense,” he stressed.
