Vladimir Putin spoke to certain international agencies on the margins of the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, focusing on the crisis sparked by the Kremlin’s February 2022 invasion. The Russian president is particularly concerned with the current situation, which involves Western countries providing Kyiv permission to hit military targets in Russia with weaponry given by their partners.
Russian weapons to hit NATO countries? “We will think about it”
Between responses, Putin dismisses claims of Russian strikes on NATO countries as “nonsense” and underlines the importance of defense. Putin threatens that if the West provides long-range missiles to Ukraine to attack Russia, Russia would respond by supplying similar weapons to strike NATO countries.
“If they consider it possible to deliver weapons to the combat zone to launch attacks on our territory and create problems for us, why don’t we have the right to supply weapons of the same type to some regions of the world to use to launch attacks on the sensitive structures of the countries that do this to Russia? We will think about it,” he says. In the West, the Russian president is identified as a villain? No problem. “Let them be afraid…”.
The delivery of Western arms represents “a very dangerous step,” says Putin. “Delivering weapons to a war zone is always negative. Even more so if those who are sending the weapons not only deliver them but also control them. This is a very serious and very dangerous step,” said the Kremlin leader, who describes seeing German tanks in Ukraine as “a shock.”
The United States must stop supplying weapons to Ukraine, and the conflict will end within 2-3 months, says Putin: “What needs to be done to stop the fighting in Ukraine? I can tell you what I once told Mr. Biden… If you want to stop hostilities in Ukraine, stop supplying weapons. And these actions will stop within two, at most three months.”
The Russian president says that if Moscow saw other countries involved in a war against Russia, it would reserve the right to act similarly. “If we see that these countries are being dragged into a war against us, and this is their direct participation in the war against the Russian Federation, then we reserve the right to act similarly.”
Western instructors are already present on Ukrainian territory and “suffer losses,” but the West prefers to keep everything quiet, he continues. “From the point of view of the presence of advisors and instructors, there is no news here: they are present on Ukrainian territory and, unfortunately for them, they suffer losses, I know for sure,” but “in European countries and the United States they prefer to keep everything quiet.”
For the Russian president, no one in the West wants to remember that the war in Ukraine started with a coup, for which Russia is not responsible. “Everyone believes that Russia started the war in Ukraine,” he says. “But no one, I want to emphasize, no one in the West, in Europe, wants to remember how this tragedy began, with a coup in Ukraine: this is the beginning of the war. Is Russia responsible for this coup? No.”
Ukraine Loses 50,000 Men a Month, We Much Less
In the war that has been ongoing for over two years, Kyiv loses “50,000 soldiers a month,” while Russia’s losses in the war in Ukraine are “several times lower,” says Putin. According to the Russian president, Ukraine currently holds 1,348 prisoners. In Russia, however, there are 6,465 Ukrainian prisoners.
Among various topics, the spotlight is on the United States. Washington, Putin says, supports Kyiv because it wants to hinder Russia’s growth: the US “is interested in their leadership, not in Ukraine.”
US Will Replace Zelensky
And for this reason, they will discard Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when he is no longer useful, says Putin: it will happen “in the spring of 2025,” he said, suggesting there are already candidates for succession. “I think the American administration will force the Ukrainian leadership to make this decision, lower the age for mobilization to 18 years, and then they will get rid of Zelensky… To do all this, it seems to me, it will take a year.”
He goes on to say that the United States is destroying itself as a result of continual internal political turmoil. “Their state, their political system, is destroying itself from within; they are also setting fire to their leadership,” he asserts. The American judicial system, says the Russian president, is being used for internal political conflict “in the case of Donald Trump.”
No changes will occur in relations on the Washington-Moscow axis after the November elections, regardless of the outcome: “We think that nothing really serious will happen.”