News 360 9 December 2022 - by Daniel Stewart
Russian President Vladimir Putin has acknowledged that the end of the war "will require some time" as achieving its goals in Ukraine "will not be easy," and has assumed that "negotiations" will have to be held.
In the framework of a press conference in the capital of Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek, Putin warned that the parties will have to accept the "realities" on Ukrainian territory, as reported by the Russian news agency TASS.
The Russian president has thus hinted that Moscow is not only claiming sovereignty over Crimea, but will use the results of the referendums held in September in the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporiyia and Kherson to claim its control over these territories.
However, Russia does not fully control these regions, especially Kherson, where Ukraine has made notable gains. Moscow is also confronted by the international community, which has never recognized the legitimacy of the aforementioned accession plebiscites.
Likewise, Putin has warned that Russia must be aware of who it is negotiating with, as "trust" in Ukraine and much of the international community is as of today "almost at zero." "I have said many times that we are ready for agreements, we are open, but this makes us think about who we are dealing with," he has said.
The president has taken the opportunity to announce that Russia could assess the possibility of "adopting" the US security strategy, which contemplates both "preemptive strikes" and "disarmament".
Along with this type of attack, the Russian president recalled that Moscow could resume the use of cruise missiles, a type of missile that Russia abandoned some time ago but which it now has again and which are "more modern and even more efficient" than those of the United States.
Putin explained that the Russian protocol aims at a "counterattack response", so that when the alert systems warn of the arrival of missiles, there are already "hundreds" of projectiles in the air on their way to Russian territory. Thus, the president has advocated changing the strategy to that of "preventive attacks".
On the other hand, the Russian president ruled out the possibility of decreeing a new partial mobilization like the one at the end of September, in the framework of which Russia recruited a total of 300,000 citizens to join the ranks in Ukraine.
Thus, Putin asserted that as of today "the conditions do not exist" for a new mobilization, and detailed that about 150,000 of the troops recruited with the previous decree are on Ukrainian territory, although only half of them are on the front line of combat.
Of the remaining 150,000 recruits, President Putin reported that they are in "training camps", thus confirming that the Russian Armed Forces have a sort of "combat reserve".
Finally, the Russian leader has confirmed that the "special military operation" in Ukraine is continuing normally and under the plans envisaged by Moscow. "Everything is stable for us, there are no issues and problems," he said.
"The Defense Ministry behaves quite transparently, everything that happens in the realities on the ground is reflected in the daily reports (...) Everything is really objective," President Putin has concluded.
