Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday said he had no doubt that the goals of the so-called special operation in Ukraine would be met.
He called these goals “noble”, noting that the main one is “helping people in the Donbass.” He once more accused Ukraine of “genocide”.
Putin addressed the employees of the Vostochny cosmodrome, which he visited on Cosmonautics Day. This is his first speech on the topic of the war in Ukraine in recent weeks. Putin actually confirmed his previous theses and named “clash” in Ukraine “inevitable.”
Putin announced the start of a “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24. Heavy fighting has been going on for more than a month and a half. According to the UN, the death of almost 2,000 civilians in Ukraine, including more than 100 children, has been confirmed. This is obviously incomplete data: Ukrainian authorities report that more than 10,000 people might have died in Mariupol alone. It is reported regarding the facts of massacres of civilians, the responsibility for which Ukraine lays on the Russian troops.
During the fighting, Russian troops occupied part of the territory in southern Ukraine with the city of Kherson, as well as in the Kharkiv region and in the Donbass. However, they retreated from Kyiv and from the north of Ukraine.
- On February 24, Putin announced the “denazification” and “demilitarization” of Ukraine as the goals of the operation, which he called the necessary conditions for helping the so-called “people’s republics” of Donbass, proclaimed in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions by Russia-backed separatists.
- how notes the BBC, representatives of the Russian authorities over time formulate the goals that Moscow achieves in Ukraine in different ways. In particular, in March, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu stated: “The main thing for us is to protect the Russian Federation from the military threat posed by Western countries that are trying to use the Ukrainian people in the fight once morest our country.” On April 11, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov formulated the goals as follows: “Our special military operation is designed to put an end to reckless expansion and the reckless course towards the complete dominance of the United States and other Western countries under them in the international arena.” At the same time, the occupation of Ukraine and the change of its authorities are not officially called the goals of the operation – but numerous publicists in pro-Kremlin publications and a number of political and public figures, including the head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov, are calling for an attack on Kyiv.
- Putin arrived at the Vostochny cosmodrome together with Alexander Lukashenko. He stated that Roskosmos should ensure the flight of a Belarusian cosmonaut into space in the near future.
