The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, this Friday predicted the failure of the counter-offensive that Ukrainian troops are carrying out against Russian troops in Ukraine.
“The Ukrainian armed forces don’t stand a chance in this or any other area,” Putin told the St. Petersburg International Economic Seminar (SPIEF).
Putin said Ukrainian troops “used so-called strategic reserves to break through the defenses [russas]consolidate his own defense and move forward”.
“None of these goals have been achieved,” Putin said, quoted by the French news agency AFP.
Putin reiterated that Ukraine suffered “very heavy casualties” in the recently launched counter-offensive.
He also believed that Ukraine will not be able to fight for a “long time” due to a lack of military equipment, despite Western supplies.
Moscow has insisted that the current Ukrainian offensive has failed, while Kiev says it has liberated some towns and about 100 square kilometers, mainly on the southern front.
Western military analysts have said Kiev has not yet thrown most of its troops into the counter-offensive, AFP said.
On SPIEF, Putin described his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, as a “disgrace to the Jewish people” and again accused Kiev of being controlled by neo-Nazis to justify the February 24, 2022 invasion.
“I have many Jewish friends since childhood. And they say that Zelensky is not Jewish, but a disgrace to the Jewish people. This is not a joke,” said Putin, whose long speech was broadcast live on Russian television.
Putin again accused Zelensky of covering up “neo-Nazi bastards” and treating World War II Nazi collaborators as heroes.
“Why don’t they listen to us? We are forced to fight against this,” he said.
“We have every right to consider the denazization of Ukraine as one of the main objectives,” he added.
Announcing the invasion, Putin said Moscow intended to “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine, which had split from Russia with the dissolution of the former Soviet Union in 1991.
Putin has also accused the Kiev regime of an alleged genocide of Russian speakers in Ukraine, particularly in Donbass, the region formed by the self-declared people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
The Russian leader recognized the independence of the two Ukrainian territories before launching the military invasion, which he also justified with a request for help from separatist forces in Donbass.
Last September, Russia annexed Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as Kherson and Zaporijia, after doing the same with Crimea, in 2014, when the separatist war in Donbass began, with support from Moscow.
Kiev and the wider international community do not recognize Russian sovereignty in the five regions annexed to Ukraine.
The SPIEF, considered the Russian counterpoint to the Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, runs through Saturday.
Dedicated to the theme “Sovereign development is the foundation of a just world. Let’s join forces for the good of future generations”, with the participation of representations from 15 countries, according to the official TASS agency.
The guest list includes the president of Algeria, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who is on a state visit to Russia.
Source: DN
