Russia will destroy the Patriot air defense systems if the US provides them to Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Rossiya-1 television on Sunday.
"Of course, we’ll take them out, 100%!" he said in interview with journalist Pavel Zarubin on the Moscow. Kremlin. Putin program.
The president said Ukraine so far doesn have these systems.
The Kremlin says US supplies of Patriot missiles to Ukraine, agreed upon during Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s trip to Washington, will not stop it achieving its military goals.
Vladimir Putin dismissed the weapon as old and said Russia’s missile systems would be able to shoot it down. “The Patriot air defence is outdated. An antidote will always be found … Russia will knock down the Patriot system,” he declared on Thursday.
The Russian president said “all armed conflicts end through negotiations” – implying that Ukraine would ultimately be forced to cede territory in exchange for peace. “The sooner this becomes clear to Kyiv, the better,” he added.
Putin also said stockpiles of Soviet-made weapons that former Warsaw Pact NATO members have been providing to Ukraine "are nearing exhaustion", and claimed Ukrainian military industries have been effectively knocked out.
In a call with reporters, Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said there were no signs from Zelenskiy’s meeting on Wednesday with the US president, Joe Biden, that Ukraine was ready for talks.
Peskov suggested the US was fighting a proxy war with Russia and was determined to keep going “to the last Ukrainian”.
During his first foreign trip since the invasion began in February, the Ukrainian president gave a defiant address to a joint session of the US Congress. He said his country would never give in to Russian aggression and that the White House’s continued support was key to ultimate victory.
On Thursday, Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, inspected frontline positions in occupied Ukraine, according to the RIA Novosti state media agency. A video showed him travelling in a convoy of Z-marked armoured vehicles, touring a barracks and talking to soldiers.
Shoigu congratulated soldiers and said: “Everything will be fine.” There was no evidence that the footage was shot in Ukraine, with only muddy fields in the background. Shoigu did not appear to be near the eastern city of Bakhmut, visited by Zelenskiy on Tuesday and the scene of bitter combat.
LPR forces say Ukraine deployed more troops to Svatovo area due to heavy losses
Officer of the People's Militia of the Lugansk People's Republic (LPR) Andrey Marochko has said, citing intelligence data, that Ukraine deployed more troops to the Svatovo area due to heavy losses.
"A deployment of additional forces and means of Ukrainian armed formation has been detected toward the settlement of Svatovo," he told TASS.
Marochko said that move by the Ukrainian command was forced because of "mortality and sanitary losses exceeded the estimated figures, and the fire means turned out to be ineffective". He said on Friday that Russian forces were conducting flexible defense near Svatovo.
The commander of volunteer special forces unit Troya who goes by the call name Alabai told TASS earlier that Ukrainian command is seeking to cut the link between the towns of Svatovo and Starobelsk at any cost to human lives, even in elite units.
No comments:
Post a Comment