Putin says goals in Ukraine have not changed
Russian President Vladimir Putin has speaking at his annual phone-in with the Russian public, which is being held alongside his end-of-year press conference.
On the Ukraine war, he said his country’s goals had not changed.
“There will be peace when we achieve our goals. Let’s return to these goals: they have not changed. I’ll remind you of what we talked about then: the denazification of Ukraine, its demilitarization, its neutral status,” he said, according to a Reuters translation.
“As for demilitarization, if they don’t want to come to an agreement, then we are forced to take other measures, including military ones. Or we will agree on certain terms. By the way we agreed on these in talks in Istanbul. But then these agreements were scrapped. But we agreed on this. There are other possibilities – either reach an agreement or resolve it by force. This is what we will strive for.”
Don’t mention the war? How much of Russia’s ‘special military operation’ will Putin talk about?
Keen followers of Russian news and politics will be interested to see how much of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s public phone-in and press conference features the war in Ukraine, or “special military operation,” as Russia calls it.
Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told the Rossiya-24 television channel Wednesday that questions submitted by the Russian public ahead of the phone-in mainly relate to the “special military operation” in Ukraine and the “international situation.”
Peskov said many questions refer to “the special military operation in all its aspects,” such as the current situation in the war, Russia’s objectives and the future of servicemen who are returning from the battlefield, news agency Tass reported.
Russians are also asking Putin “whether the Russian economy and social sphere are resilient enough and whether the state will continue to fulfil its social obligations,” the news outlet added.
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