Russia always responds militarily to Ukrainian strikes, but it seldom presents its retaliation as breaking news, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on Friday.
"We hit military targets with high-accuracy long-range and high-yield weapons and succeed in this respect. It's enough to see arms depots, warehouses and barracks housing personnel, including foreign mercenaries destroyed.... There always follows a retaliation. We just avoid presenting it as breaking news very often, but this retaliation is sensitive and the enemy knows this," Putin said.
Kiev must understand that in case of continued attacks on Russian territory, Moscow will consider creating a "sanitary cordon" in Ukraine, he warned.
"If these attacks on our adjacent territories continue, we will consider creating a 'sanitary cordon' on Ukrainian territory. They just have to realize where they are heading for," he said.
The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), the largest annual economic and business event in Russia, is running on June 14-17. The theme of this year's forum is "Sovereign Development as a Basis for a Just World: Joining Forces for Future Generations". The event is organized by the Roscongress Foundation. TASS is its official media partner.
Ukrainian counteroffensive yielding heavy losses – and no gains
Russia’s president provided an update on the ongoing long-heralded Ukrainian counteroffensive, which began tentatively in early June. To date, Kiev’s forces have lost some 186 tanks and 418 armored vehicles of other types, according to Putin.
“Their losses are very heavy – about more than one in ten compared to the Russian army. That is a fact. In terms of hardware, the loss of this equipment is growing every day,” he said, adding that Kiev has thus far failed to achieve its goals, wasting its strategic reserves in the push against Russia’s forces.
Western military aid will not help Ukraine
The intensified military action has caused a rapid depletion of Ukraine’s own war materiel stockpile, Putin said, predicting that the country’s armed forces are set to become entirely dependent on foreign aid in the nearest future.“Well, you won’t be able to wage war for long like that. Our defense industry, however, is growing day by day,” he said.
Any weaponry Kiev receives from the collective West will end up destroyed, Putin warned. “Tanks are burning. Among them are the Leopards. They burn. So will the F-16s. There is no doubt,” the president stated, referring to the potential deliveries of advanced US-made aircraft long-sought by Kiev.
NATO involvement in the conflict is deepening
The potential delivery of F-16 fighter jets would get the US-led NATO bloc even more deeply involved into the conflict, Putin said. Moreover, the aircraft may end up stationed abroad, while only operating in Ukraine’s airspace during combat sorties.
In such an event, “we will need to look at how and where we can hit those assets used in combat operations against us,” Putin said. “This is a serious danger of further dragging NATO into this armed conflict.”
West will want to talk to Russia on security guarantees
Moscow has never refused to engage in dialogue with the collective West, coming up with a comprehensive security deal proposal shortly before the ongoing hostilities started, Putin said. The West, however, rejected the dialogue – but it will ultimately be forced to abandon its confrontational stance.
“Regarding whether it is needed to conduct a dialogue with them or not, I repeat once again, we did not reject this dialogue,” Putin said. “It was them who decided to sever this dialogue with us. Well, they don’t want to talk… whatever. They will.”
Russian stance on nuclear weapons use explained
Russia’s president also cautioned against normalizing talk of nuclear weapons use, warning that “the very fact of discussing this topic already lowers the threshold for their use.” At the same time, Putin rejected the idea of engaging in any nuclear disarmament talks with the West.
“We possess more weaponry of such sort than the NATO countries. They know that and are always trying to persuade us to start negotiations on reduction. ‘Nuts’ to them, you know, as our people say,” he said.
South Africa calls out Reuters’ air-raid ‘misinformation
South African presidential spokesman Vincent Magwenya has accused Reuters of peddling lies, after the news agency claimed that a Russian missile strike sent his delegation running for a bunker in Kiev. It was not the first time Ukrainian authorities sounded air raid sirens when foreign leaders arrived in the city.
Magwenya arrived in Kiev on Friday with President Cyril Ramaphosa, who along with five other African leaders met with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to promote a negotiated end to the conflict with Russia. According to Reuters, air raid sirens and explosions were heard in the city, and the group was whisked to a shelter underneath a hotel.
Ukrainian officials seized on the opportunity to accuse Russia of undermining the peace mission. “Russian missiles are a message to Africa: Russia wants more war, not peace,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba wrote on Twitter. “Whenever a high-ranking foreign delegation visits Ukraine, Russia greets it with a missile attack on our peaceful cities,” said Andrey Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential staff.
However, no sirens or explosions were actually heard, Magwenya said. “We didn't hear any explosions,” he tweeted. “Instead, we saw people going on about their day leisurely. Everything seems normal from what we have experienced thus far.”
“It's very strange that we didn't hear or see an explosion. There's obviously some deliberate misinformation being spread here,” he told South Africa’s News24 outlet. “As we expected this mission was never going to be easy but some of the hurdles are deeply disturbing, like... this so-called explosion."
One day earlier, a plane carrying Ramaphosa’s security detail and a number of journalists was held at Warsaw’s Chopin Airport in Poland, with Polish authorities demanding the security personnel surrender their weapons. After a 26-hour standoff, passengers were finally allowed to disembark on Friday afternoon.
Throughout its military operation in Ukraine, Russia has attacked military and infrastructure targets around Kiev with missiles and drones. However, air raid sirens have also been turned on almost every time a high-profile Western leader visits Zelensky in the city, even at times when no missile strikes were taking place.
When sirens blared as US President Joe Biden arrived in Kiev in February, CNN reporter Alex Marquardt noted that no alarms had gone off for five days beforehand, with the alert only triggered when cameras were on Biden and Zelensky.
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