(CNN) — Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that he did not regret the deadly missile strikes. once morest civilian targets throughout Ukraine that took place this week, but said no more “massive” attacks were needed for now.
The wave of missile attacks on cities across Ukraine began Monday in response to an explosion over the weekend at a strategic bridge connecting the annexed Crimean peninsula with Russia. It is unknown what caused the blast, but Putin blamed it on Kyiv on Monday, calling it a “terrorist attack” that might not go unanswered.
The heavy shelling that followed over the next two days caused the death of at least 19 people and razed civilian targets across the country, sparking global outrage. The attacks also caused significant damage to electrical systems throughout Ukraine, forcing the population to reduce consumption during peak hours to avoid blackouts.
Putin said that while he did not regret the attacks and believed Russia’s actions were correct, he recognized that “what is happening now is unpleasant.”
The president also defended his partial mobilization of Russians that began in September, telling reporters that it is expected to end in two weeks and that some 222,000 soldiers have already been drafted into the army.
The mobilization got off to a chaotic start last month, sparking unusual protests across the country. Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly men of fighting age, fled Russia for neighboring countries such as Georgia and Kazakhstan to avoid the draft.
Putin also stated that Russia does not intend to “destroy” Ukraine, as President Volodymyr Zelensky and Western leaders have previously claimed. His comments come seven months following Russia launched a full-scale invasion and as it tries to annex four Ukrainian regions in violation of international law.
Would Putin meet with Biden?
The Russian leader was speaking at a rare news conference in Astana, Kazakhstan, where Putin had traveled for a meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a regional intergovernmental organization made up of former Soviet states.
Asked if he would meet US President Joe Biden, Putin told a reporter he “doesn’t see the need to negotiate.”
Biden was asked a similar question in an exclusive interview with CNN earlier this week. The president said he saw “no reason” to meet with his Russian counterpart, though he said he might make an exception to discuss the fate of imprisoned US basketball star Brittney Griner.
Russian losses in southern Ukraine
Russian officials said civilian evacuations would begin on Friday in the occupied Kherson region of southern Ukraine, where the Kremlin has suffered a series of defeats at the hands of Ukrainian forces.
Further east, Russian forces have made some small gains in Donetsk, towards the city of Bakhmut, aided largely by Wagner’s mercenaries, private military contractors. Moscow is likely to see the city as a jump-off point to Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the largest Ukrainian-held urban areas in Donetsk, according to the British Defense Ministry.
Bakhmut is currently under Ukrainian control, but has been bombarded by Russian artillery for months. Reports from pro-Russian analysts and Russian state media said Kyiv had begun withdrawing some forces from the city, but CNN was unable to independently verify those claims. Ukrainian officials have not commented on them, but have pointed out that Bakhmut is under fierce dispute.
Meanwhile, the prospects for Russian forces in Jerson and the northeastern region of Luhansk remain bleak. Kyiv has continued to gain ground along the western bank of the Dnipro River, an important river route through Ukraine and Eastern Europe, as it advances towards the city of Jershon.
Fighting near the city of Jershon continued on Friday. Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Russian-backed administration in Jershon, said Moscow forces were “bravely and professionally restraining daily attempts by Kyiv regime militants to breach the defences.”
The remains of a destroyed apartment in Bakhmut.
However, Stremousov said civilians needed to be a “safe distance from hostilities” and Kherson residents appeared to have started to evacuate. The governor of Russia’s eastern Rostov region, Vasily Golubev, said on Thursday that local authorities were preparing to receive Kherson residents fleeing from the front, the Russian state news agency TASS reported. Golubev said the first group of evacuees would arrive on Friday.
Golubev’s remarks came following the Russian deputy prime minister confirmed that Moscow would assist in the evacuation, following requests from the head of Kherson’s administration, backed by the Kremlin, who had requested help.
Concerns Russia might force civilians to move
Now there is concern that Ukrainian citizens in occupied territory may be forced to go to Russian territory once morest their will. Reports emerged early in the war that tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians had been forcibly sent to so-called “filtration centers” before being transferred to Russia. Moscow denounced the claims as lies, claiming that Ukraine has hampered its efforts to “evacuate” people to Russia. But the accusations regarding these centers raised painful memories of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s forcible deportation of millions of people from their home countries.
Over the summer, Ukrainian officials in the disputed Zaporizhia region appealed to citizens in Russian-occupied territory to move away from the front lines and to another territory controlled by Ukraine. If that option was not possible, they advised Ukrainians to use Crimea or Russian territory as a transit route to Ukraine or a friendly country.
Ukrainian officials are now advising those on the front lines in Kherson to avoid traveling to Russia altogether.
“Under no circumstances should they go to the Russian Federation,” Oleksandr Samoylenko, a senior Ukrainian official in the Kherson region, warned on Friday. Samoylenko said that Ukrainian forces were only targeting Russian positions and equipment with high-precision weapons.
Both Samoylenko and his deputy, Yurii Sobolevskyi, accused Russia of trying to drive Ukrainian citizens out of the region to repopulate it with “zombies 100% loyal to Moscow.” Sobolevskyi alleged that a similar scheme was carried out in Crimea following Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014.
Kherson is one of four regions that Russia is trying to annex from Ukraine. The others are Zaporizhia, in southern Ukraine, and Donetsk and Luhansk, two regions in eastern Ukraine where fighting once morest Russian-backed secessionist republics has raged since 2014.
CNN’s Tim Lister, Joshua Berlinger and Eliza Mackintosh contributed to this report.
