President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia had only just begun in Ukraine and challenged the West to try to defeat it on the battlefield, while insisting that Moscow was still open to the idea of peace talks.
In a hardline speech to parliamentary leaders more than four months into the war, Putin said the prospects for any negotiations would dim as the conflict drags on.
“Today we heard that they want to defeat us on the battlefield. What can you say, let them try,” she said.
“We have heard many times that the West wants to fight us to the last Ukrainian. This is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but it seems that everything is heading towards this.”
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Russia accuses the West of waging a proxy war against it, hitting its economy with sanctions and increasing supplies of advanced weapons to Ukraine.
But while boasting that Russia was just getting started, Putin also touched on the possibility of negotiations.
“Everyone should know that, in general, we haven’t started anything in earnest yet,” he added. “At the same time, we do not reject peace talks. But those who turn them down should know that the further you go, the more difficult it will be for them to negotiate with us.”
It was the first reference to diplomacy in many weeks after repeated statements from Moscow that negotiations with Kyiv had completely broken down.
Since invading Ukraine on February 24, Russian forces have captured large swathes of the country, including seizing the eastern Luhansk region last Sunday.
But their progress has been much slower than many analysts predicted, and they were rebuffed in initial attempts to take the capital, Kyiv, and the second city, Kharkiv.
The prospects for compromise appear remote as Ukraine, emboldened by Western support and the heavy losses it has inflicted on its opponent in terms of men and equipment, has talked of driving Russia out of all the territory it has seized.
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Ukraine’s chief negotiator, Mykhailo Podolyak, dismissed Putin’s notion of a plot directed against Russia by the West.
“There is no ‘Collective West’ plan. Just a specific z-army that entered sovereign Ukraine, bombed cities and killed civilians,” Podolyak tweeted. “Everything else is primitive propaganda. That is why Mr. Putin’s mantra of ‘war on the last Ukrainian’ is yet another piece of evidence of deliberate Russian genocide.”
Podolyak said on Twitter this week that Ukraine’s conditions for resuming talks would include: “Cease fire. Withdrawal of Z troops. Return of kidnapped citizens. Extradition of war criminals. repair mechanism. The recognition of the sovereign rights of Ukraine”.
Putin said it was obvious that Western sanctions were creating difficulties, “but not what the initiators of the economic blitzkrieg against Russia were counting on.”
Parliamentary leaders responded to Putin’s comments and one, Sergei Mironov of the Just Russia party, encouraged him to set up a special agency to facilitate the integration of occupied Ukrainian territories into Russia, an idea Putin promised to discuss.
(Additional reporting by Ronald Popeski; Editing by Leslie Adler and Deepa Babington)