Russian President Vladimir Putin made one of his most ominous warnings yet since he ordered the invasion of Ukraine.
Putin claimed Moscow has barely begun its campaign against Ukraine. And furthermore, Putin dared the West to try and defeat Russia on the battlefield.
“Everyone should know that, by and large, we haven’t started anything yet in earnest,” Putin said.
The speech was made while meeting with parliamentary leaders Thursday. At the meeting, Putin said the prospects for any negotiation would grow dimmer the longer the conflict goes on.
“At the same time, we don’t reject peace talks,” Putin said. “But those who reject them should know that the further it goes, the harder it will be for them to negotiate with us.”
Putin also accused the West of fueling hostilities and came short of directly daring Ukraine’s western allies to fight.
Putin charged that “the West wants to fight us until the last Ukrainian,” and that they were welcome to try, but it would only bring tragedy for Ukraine.
“Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield. What can you say – let them try,” Putin said.
“We have heard many times that the west wants to fight us to the last Ukrainian. This is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but it seems that everything is heading towards this,” he said.
Putin also raged against “totalitarian liberalism,” saying that the West had tried imposing this on the world. He reaffirmed one of his long-held claims too, which is that the West is using the war in Ukraine to isolate and weaken Russia.
He claimed the sanctions imposed against Russia by the West had failed to achieve a goal of “sowing division and strife” in Russia. However, he conceded that sanctions were creating difficulties, “but not at all what the initiators of the economic blitzkrieg against Russia were counting on”.
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