Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that peace talks with Ukraine had reached “a dead end,” an ominous sign as the country pushes ahead with its military offensive.
Putin claimed Kyiv negotiated in bad faith, saying Ukraine changed its position on several points after negotiators from both sides met for peace talks in Turkey on March 29. Negotiations are “back to the dead-end solution,” and the fighting “will continue to its complete end,” the Russian leader said.
“We reached a certain level of agreements in Istanbul, which stated that security guarantees for Ukraine … would not spread to Crimea, Sevastopol, and Donbas,” Putin said during a press conference Tuesday. “We acted to create conditions to continue talks. Instead, we faced the provocation in Bucha, and, what’s most important, the Ukrainian side deviated from the Istanbul agreements.”
BUCHA MASSACRE PROMPTS WEST TO CONSIDER STRONGER SANCTIONS, TOTAL RUSSIAN GAS BOYCOTT
The Russian leader, in his first extended comments about the war since March, defended his decision to invade Ukraine and said his forces would “move rhythmically, calmly” — foretelling more fighting as hopes for a peaceful resolution dwindle.
Putin also insisted Russia’s military campaign was going as planned and said he was confident his forces would achieve success despite stiff Ukrainian opposition and significant losses.
The ex-KGB spy called reports of atrocities against civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha “fake” and said accusations of war crimes committed there would be seen as a “provocation.”
Last week, German intelligence intercepted Russian military radio messages discussing the massacre of civilians in Bucha. The German Federal Intelligence Service presented its findings to the German Bundestag on Wednesday, according to a report in German news magazine Der Spiegel.
The United Nations General Assembly voted Thursday to approve a U.S.-led campaign to suspend Russia from the world organization’s leading human rights body over its unprovoked attack on Ukraine. The country’s suspension from the 47-member Human Rights Council was seen as a strong diplomatic rebuke of Russian atrocities in Ukraine, specifically in Bucha, where hundreds of civilians were butchered, burned, and killed, multiple outlets reported.
Russian troops, having failed to topple the capital city of Kyiv, are focusing on the eastern Donbas region with the “main goal” of protecting civilians in the east, according to Putin.
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Putin made his remarks following a tour of the Vostochny spaceport in the Russian Far East alongside ally President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus. Both were celebrating Cosmonautics Day, which marks the anniversary of the first human spaceflight by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in 1961. Even Russian cosmonauts were swept into the controversy since the war broke out in Ukraine, much to their surprise.
Russia invaded on Feb. 24 with the goal of taking Kyiv, toppling the government, and installing a Moscow-friendly regime, according to Western officials.
