Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday threatened to arm third countries that could attack Western interests if the West allows it to attack Ukraine with its long-range missiles.
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The comments come as Western countries begin authorizing strikes on Russian territory by providing arms to Kyiv under certain conditions. Ukraine has been demanding this right for months.
However, Russia has “no imperial ambitions” and is not planning to attack NATO, Putin assures.
Mr. For Putin, Moscow will respond if long-range missiles are launched against targets in Russia in the future, requiring the assistance of Western military personnel.
“If anyone thinks it is possible to supply such weapons to a war zone attacking our territory […]Why should we not have the same right to supply our weapons to regions of the world where sensitive installations of countries acting against Russia are attacked?” That Mr. Putin began during a lengthy interview. Press organizations including AFP.
AFP
Many Western countries oppose the use of their weapons on Russian territory, particularly long-range, high-precision missiles, which they fear could inflame Moscow.
Very dangerous
The Russian president reaffirmed that Western military instructors “are already in Ukraine, and they are suffering losses there.”
“They are on the territory of Ukraine and, unfortunately, they are suffering losses. The United States and European countries want to remain calm during this meeting organized on the sidelines of the Economic Forum in St. Petersburg (Northwestern Russia).
France recently announced that it is considering sending military instructors to Ukraine to speed up the training of Ukrainian soldiers, and to create a European alliance for this.
Western instructors are in Ukraine and fighting Ukrainian forces “under the guise of mercenaries,” Mr. Putin already said last week.
Other countries, such as the United States, have denied sending instructors and no state has reported its military presence in Ukraine.
Throughout the meeting, the Russian leader reiterated his arguments that Russia was ready to come to the negotiating table and that the best way to end the war was to “cease arms supplies” to Ukraine.
“Supplying arms to a conflict zone is always a bad thing, especially when coupled with the fact that the suppliers not only supply the arms, but also control them. This is a very serious and very dangerous activity,” he said.
AFP
He also declined to quantify Russian military losses in the nearly two-and-a-half-year conflict, saying they were “significantly lower” than Ukrainian losses, “by a ratio of five to one.”
“If we talk about irreparable losses [de morts]Then the ratio is one to five,” he said, comparing losses on the Ukrainian side.
He assured that the ratio between the losses of the two armies was comparable to the difference between the number of prisoners captured by each side. According to him, Russia currently has 6,465 Ukrainian troops, while Ukrainian hands have 1,348 Russian troops.
Since the start of the offensive on Ukraine in February 2022, many Western experts have spoken of tens of thousands of Russian soldiers killed.
No statistics on losses
The BBC and independent Russian media outlet Mediazona, for their part, claim to have verified the deaths of at least 50,000 Russian soldiers.
During his first press conference with Western media since December, Vladimir Putin pledged Russia’s readiness to cooperate with the French investigation into the May 9, 2023 death of AFP journalist Armand Sold in Ukraine.
AFP
“We are ready to organize this work, I don’t know how we can do it practically if this person dies in a war zone, but we will do everything we can,” he said.
The Kremlin had previously indicated that Russia could not investigate, arguing that the area where the journalist was killed was under Ukrainian control.
The national anti-terrorist case in France has opened a preliminary investigation into war crimes to determine the circumstances of Armand Soldin’s death and the origin of the shootings.
Arman Soldin, AFP’s video coordinator in Ukraine, died at the age of 32 in a rocket attack in Chasiv Yar, Donbass, while covering the particularly bloody Battle of Bakmut.
After more than nine months of fighting, the city was captured by Russia at the end of May 2023. Russia is still on the offensive in this area and is now at the gates of Chasiv Iar.
