Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annual marathon press conference is perhaps best summarized as a mashup of a municipal board meeting and geopolitical talkfest. The Kremlin leader makes sweeping pronouncements about the current global order, interspersed with small-bore questions from local journalists about the quality of roads in the Komi Republic.
But this year’s direct-line event comes on the heels of Europe throwing a $105 billion lifeline to Ukraine in the form of an interest-free loan to keep Kyiv in the fight against Moscow.
While Brussels stopped short of enacting a controversial proposal to divert billions in frozen Russian assets held in Europe to Ukraine, the loan quite literally gives the Ukrainians time – and ammunition – as the war launched by Putin in February 2022 approaches the four-year mark.
Perhaps with that aid package in mind, Putin was pretty unsparing in his remarks on the war. He began by listing Moscow’s incremental gains on the battlefield, saying Russia was “advancing across the whole of the front line,” and reeled off a list of towns and villages that Russian forces now claim full or partial control over.
Putin also deflected blame for the extraordinary loss of life, claiming against all evidence that the Kremlin “did not start this war.” But the Russian president did signal a sort of openness to reaching a negotiated end to the conflict, saying Russia was “ready and willing to end this conflict peacefully, based on the principles I outlined last June at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and by addressing the root causes that led to this crisis.”
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