What Putin wants to change with the military campaign in Ukraine

(Dan Tri Newspaper) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow should have decided to launch a military operation in Ukraine earlier and prepared more thoroughly.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (Photo: TASS).

"You know, if you could look at the situation in 2022, knowing what is happening now, what would I think? I think that decision (to launch a military operation in Ukraine) should have been made sooner," Russian President Vladimir Putin said at his year-end press conference on December 19.

He added: "Secondly, we should have started preparing for these operations, including special military operations."

The Kremlin leader admitted that Russia's military operations in 2022 began without thorough preparation and that the events in Crimea following the 2014 Ukrainian coup were spontaneous.

"Why did we decide to act? Because we couldn't stand idly by and wait for the situation to get worse for us," he emphasized.

He reiterated that the Ukrainian authorities at the time had declared they would not abide by the Minsk agreements and had made statements about possessing weapons of mass destruction.

"We were forced to take these actions. If we had known what was going to happen, we should have prepared more systematically," he said.

President Putin also emphasized the complexity of the ongoing conflict, stating that it is difficult to predict how long the fighting will last.

"Combat operations are very complex, so making predictions is difficult and unnecessary," he said, reiterating that Moscow is working towards the goals outlined at the start of the military operation: "neutrality, demilitarization, and demilitarization of Ukraine."

On the other hand, he asserted that Russia has never ruled out the possibility of negotiations.

President Putin stated that Russia is always ready to negotiate with the legitimate government of Kyiv without any preconditions, except for those agreed upon in Istanbul (Türkiye) in 2022.

Those preliminary agreements included Ukraine's commitment to neutrality, military non-alignment, and certain restrictions on the deployment of foreign weapons.

President Putin also noted that such negotiations would have to respect the realities that have developed since then. Moscow proposed that Ukraine recognize the territories annexed by Russia, including Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia.

With Russia gaining the upper hand on the battlefield, observers believe Moscow is unlikely to compromise on the terms of peace talks.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Kyiv is not in a hurry to negotiate and compromise with Russia. He revealed that Ukraine's current priority is building relations with the incoming administration of US President-elect Donald Trump, who has claimed he can end the Russia-Ukraine conflict within 24 hours.

Source: https://dantri.com.vn/the-gioi/dieu-ong-putin-muon-thay-doi-voi-chien-dich-quan-su-o-ukraine-20241220111917257.htm