Almost ten months after Russia invaded Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin acknowledged on Wednesday that Russia’s “special military operation” is a “long process” and signaled he has no plans to give up the Ukrainian territory Russia has captured.
“As for the duration of the special military operation, well, of course, this can be a long process,” Putin said at a meeting of his Human Rights Council. While he expects the war to be long, the Russian leader said he saw no need to mobilize more troops. He said that the war had brought results for Russia, including the territories it annexed in the Donbas, Kherson, and Zaporizhia.
“New territories have appeared. This is a significant result for Russia. These are serious questions. Take the Sea of Azov, which has become Russia’s inland sea,” Putin said. The Russian leader added that he believes the most important thing isn’t the territory but the people who live there that want to be part of Russia.
Putin’s comments are another sign that there is no end in sight to the fighting in Ukraine. While Putin now considers this territory part of Russia, officials in Kyiv maintain their goal is to drive Russia out of all the areas it has captured since February and Crimea, which Russia has controlled since 2014.
In his comments on Wednesday, Putin also warned that the risk of nuclear war is increasing. When asked by a member of the Human Rights Council if he would commit to a no first use policy, Putin said the obligation could prevent Russia from using a nuclear weapon in the event of a nuclear attack.
“If it doesn’t use it first under any circumstances, it means that it won’t be the second to use it either because the possibility of using it in case of a nuclear strike on our territory will be sharply limited,” he said.
The US slammed Putin’s comments as “loose talk” about nuclear weapons, but the US also doesn’t have a no first use policy. President Biden has also recently warned that the risk of nuclear war is higher today than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Putin thought this conflict could be solved by the diplomacy. Now it is clear – it can be solved only by the military force. Of course, it takes a longer time. As Putin said in the same video, only 150K Russian troops are active in Donbass, Novorossia and Ukraine. And only half of them (less than 80K) are involved in the real fighting. Other 150K are busy with the training in different regions of Russia.
Ukrainian army, together with the foreign mercenaries is around 900K. A part of Donetsk oblast is still under Ukrainian occupation. It is unrealistic to expect the end of the war any soon.
Putin thought this conflict could be solved by the diplomacy? Is this the same Putin that invaded Ukraine?
Imagine if he didnt think it could be solved by diplomacy.
Both Putin and Ziolensky have agreed that Minsk II is dead. This does not bode well for the cessation of war.
If ZelBoy had adhered to Minsk, this would not have happened. Instead, he foolishly went along with Not-So-Great Britain and the United Snakes.
Peaceful Putin has once again spoken.
This is the guy making everyone believe Russia is open to negotiations.
So killing Ukrainians, destroying Ukrainian cities and stealing their land is a long process?
I agree with Putin but the Ukrainians know this as well and they will make this a long PAINFUL process for Russia.
F Putin, Im doubling down my support for Ukraine. Hope the continue retaking land.
“The US slammed Putin’s comments as “loose talk” about nuclear weapons, but the US also doesn’t have a no first use policy.”
At least President Putin can put loose talk together unlike senile windup idiot Joey Biden who can only babel and get a portion of his teleprompter pre-written comments correct.
I love this Nuclear talk. Let us never forget which Democratic{sic} country was and is to date the only one to have used Nukes on Japan despite their desires to surrender. Defenders of freedom and peace as far as thge US is concerned is pure fiction. The US sees itself as the COPS of the world in search of power and profit.They will strike with a vengeance anybody who challenges this empirical right.
I disagree since you are unaware of history.
Japan was run by a military more crazy than Poland and almost as crazy as Ukraine. The Japanese military were on a suicide mission for themselves and the civilian population of Japan since late 1943. From the Battle of Peleliu to Iwo Jima to the Battle for Okinawa thousands of Americans were killed in action and the Japanese forces committed suicide en mass rather than surrender.
If the US had invaded Japan the number of civilians killed would have run into the millions along with hundreds of thousands of US, Japanese, and allied troops.
It took two nukes to bring the military to the table to surrender and only after the Emperor intervened.
In Ukraine there are insane amateurs like Zelensky who are throwing the young men of Ukraine into the meat grinder to satisfy their insane hatred of Russians and increase their net worth with American cash.
Disagree, CT.
Japan was willing to surrender IF they could retain their emperor. Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki were civilian populations, and relatively unscathed, Amerikkka thought it would be a great idea to test their nukes on them, and it was mainly for Stalin’s benefit. ( “See what we’re capable of?”)
And in the end, Japan was able to keep its Emperor.
What a waste of human life. The very thought of it makes me nauseous.
Let’s review the facts. The Japanese Army was never willing to surrender and fought viciously the closer America came to their shores. After Hiroshima was bombed the Army high command still would not agree to surrender. After Nagasaki was bombed it took a major action by the Emperor to stand down the Army. There was even an aborted revolt of young fanatical Army officers that want to continue to fight at all cost.
1. The Battle for Pelalu: American Casualties 7919 / 1460 KIA Japanese casualties 13,600 Killed in Action (KIA)
2. The Battle for Iwo Jima: American Casualties 27,071 / 8,061 KIA Japanese casualties 18,375 Killed in Action
3. The Battle for Okinawa: American Casualties 50,000 / 12,500 KIA Japanese casualties 77,166 Killed in Action
4. Estimated losses for an invasion of Japan: American casualties 1.7 to 4 million / 400,000 to 800,000 KIA Japanese casualties 5 to 10 million KIlled in action.
So you see that monstrous violent action in using nuclear weapons saved 5 to 10 million Japanese lives and 400,000 to 800,000 American lives.
Ending wars takes more than just good wishes. When a government is controlled by fanatics who want to sacrifice all civilians in a national suicide violent action to end a war is required. It was true in Nazi Germany, 1945 Japan, and Ukraine today.
https://www.newsweek.com/lessons-us-civil-war-show-why-ukraine-cant-win-opinion-1764992
The Japanese regime had been making surrender overtures since March of 1945, with the only sticking point being that the emperor not be deposed.
The Japanese in 1945 had a civilian silo, Navy silo, and Army silo all with their own agendas. The civilian side and Navy side would have agreed to a diplomatic solution. The fanatical Japanese Army would not agree to any solution until great force turned their command to stand down. National suicide was thought to be more respectable than surrender and that was and is ingrained in the culture of Japan.
Even after the Emperor mandated a surrender a few radical young Army officers attempted a coup to force a continuation of the war.
CT, your numbers of “lives saved” as a result of employing nuclear weapons are pure speculation.
Unless you’re one of the Psychic Friends.
No those are the numbers from the US and Allied planners. An invasion of Japan would have been horrible for all parties.
That’s the narrative to justify what is not justifiable. Japan was ready to surrounded and the US knew it. The nuclear strikes were a life-experiment on a civilian population to test the bombs and to send a message to Moscow.
Before the nuclear strike, the US had killed more than 100,000 civilians in one night of bombing Tokyo. That is more than were killed initially in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. If it had wanted to send a message to Japan, the US could have dropped the bomb on military installations or on sparsely populated regions. Nagasaki and Hiroshima were chosen because these cities had not yet been destroyed by conventional bombing. The bombs were dropped on the city centers, so American doctors sent to Japan were able to measure the effect on the civilian population at specific distances from the center. 90% of the victims were children, women and old people. One bomb would have been enough, but the US wanted to test two different designs of the bomb to see which had the greatest effect on people an on buildings. The American medics returned several times to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to exactly measure the results of their experiment without treating a single victim.
If you had told that plan to Dr. Mengele, he would have recoiled in horror. But the Americans are proud of their crimes until the present days.
So well said! 👏
I have read of the horrors suffered by the affected Japanese by witnesses who lived to tell. One described human beings walking around with no skin on them.
War crimes, surely! But the victor never is tried nor convicted!
Protection racket or Mafia is probably a more suitable analogy. Biden has all the allures of an aging godfather who needs to do a lot of arms-twisting to keep his whoring sun out of prison.
I will and would be the last person to issue sainthood to Putin. However he is fighting for the survival of Russia against the Imperialistic designs of the West.Biden and his right wing militaristic war lovers are making a shitload of money out of this aggression.Read your history and not only the MSM and you will realize that Putin is not to blame. This goes back to broken treatys by the Bushes and the Clintons all lovers of profits from war and death.If our military budgets take a major hit with peace in the world there will be more movements for this found money to be funnelled to the people. Capitalism ain’t having that.
“If it doesn’t use it first under any circumstances, it means that it won’t be the second to use it either because the possibility of using it in case of a nuclear strike on our territory will be sharply limited,” he said.
I don’t quite understand the point Putin is making here – can someone explain to me? Surely a no first use policy doesn’t limit how you can use it in retaliation after a nuclear attack.
Strictly speaking, Russia doesn’t have a no-first strike policy either. According to Russia’s nuclear doctrine, there are only two cases in which nuclear weapons may be used:
1) when Russia is attacked by nuclear weapons,
2) when the existence of the Russian State is in danger due to a conventional attack.
The US is more liberal in its use of nuclear weapons. The US reserves the right to use nuclear weapons when
– the vital interest of the US or one of its allies is in danger
What is the vital interest of an ally? Would the destruction of the NordStream pipelines not represent an attack on Germany’s vital economic interest?
Also by moving US missiles closer to the Russian border, an accidental nuclear war becomes more likely, especially in times of tension. And the US’s deployment of low-yield tactical nukes lowers the threshold for a nuclear exchange.
All through the cold war, US planning included a nuclear first strike against a conventional Soviet attack.
“…Putin also warned that the risk of nuclear war is increasing.” Drones attacked a nuclear base in Russia on Monday. We could have had nuclear war this past Monday. NATO/US/UK/Ukraine keeps escalating. Russians are still reacting until they decide that they will never allow themselves to become slaves like Germany and Japan after WWII. I think it already is too late for all of us.
It was the crazed Zelensky who attacked the nuclear base, NATO does not want that. The U.S. actually changed the HIMARs before they were sent to Ukraine so that they wouldn’t be able to attack deep into Russia.
It’s always proxies over which the powers have lost control that start wars. WW1 was started by a Serbian irredentist over which the Serbian government had lost control. The Serbian government even tried to warn Vienna about a lose gun trying to assassinate the arch duke. But it was too late. The chain reactions of the military alliances of the day drove Europe into a war nobody was able to stop. It’ll be the same for WW3.
Where are all of the World’s Diplomats? If the risk of nuclear war is higher than during the Cuban Missile Crises, it makes sense to me there should be some immediate sit downs and negotiations to stave off such nuclear war possibilities…
As Putin has categorically ruled out a Russian first strike I kind of think that Biden was just being nostalgic 🙂
He can be nostalgic on his own time, not on mine/ours…
We need to place him in a bomb shelter where he can act out his fantasies of being the greatest cold war president ever, without harming the rest of the world.
I think that is an excellent idea OB, they just need to make sure he has plenty of tidily winks….
Sure he should not have scared the population.
What’s left of the sane population, he scares every day.
well if they are easily scared – but that appears not to be the case.
Donna, ByeDone is too focused on changing his Depends to be concerned about the words he uttered.
They’re all hiding in bomb shelters.
Yep, the basement isn’t good enough for the great grifter Biden now. He’ll need to hide himself in a fortified bunker this time.
The world has diplomats, just not in the West. Apparently the DOS is more hawkish that the NSC. Guess that is what happens when a great power plunders the world’s resources for 3 decades uncontained by another great power.
Because it isn’t true.
Putin added that he believes the most important thing isn’t the territory but the people who live there that want to be part of Russia
so it is OK with uncle sam that taiwan does not want to be part of china but it is not OK with uncle sam that crimea, donbass, etc does not want to be part of ukraine
Nor does Palestine wish to become part of IsraHell.
Unequivocally.
The issue being that no one in the west and even few in the east believes that the people inside the territories that were held by Ukraine in January wants to be part of Russia.
Moreover the use of force is not acceptable way to solve a border issue.
Tell that to the West-supported Israelis, who have murdered over 200 Palestinians this year for defending themselves and their property.
I think we are telling them regularly but while the US is holding their hand over them it has little effect – also the Israelis have not actually officially annexed any territory recently – last I heard about ‘plans’ to do that was when George Bush talked about a peace plan which had to involve ‘respecting facts on the ground’ – i.e. as we understood it recognizing the territorial acquisitions of the Israelis – and that did not fly.
“Not officially”….
Since when does IsraHell need to be “official”? 😂
Well that is where they are smarter than Putin since the public announcement would give actually push western governments to have to make their attitude towards the policy known – and they would have to object to it – so very likely the US is telling the Israelis not to announce this.
You lie. The annexations have been going on so long that a pause of a year would be insignificant.
Is there any part of western aggression toward other nations you would acknowledge?
I may be wrong – if so you should have no problem digging up the official statements of annexation of Palestinian territory – I do not remember them making any such announcements – I do agree that they are actually annexing territory – I just do not remember when they last officially announced that it was government policy.
If Israeli counts then I have recognized it regularly here – otherwise I have acknowledged that the US wrongfully invaded Iraq twice, Syria, Libya and plenty of other nations further in the past – have you not been following what I have posted?
Are you under the impression that illegal policies are regularly proclaimed in public by governments?
I follow what you posted since I arrived. I don’t do chronologies.
No and if you had payed attention then you would have picked up on this fact from ,y first comment which you replied to here.
Well that certainly explains a lot!
wow mike. “the people in the west” tend to believe what they are told to believe so really no surprise there, is there. so it doesn’t really matter what you say because the reality is that ukraine began attacking crimea in 2014. the crimeans are for the most part russian speaking people and russia came to their defense. other outlying regions of ukraine such as donbass etc have also appealed to russia for help from the Kiev aggression.
There would appear to be to you – the west protested the sham excuse for the invasion of Iraq – so no we do not just believe what we are told to believe.
During the 5 days between the ousting of the legitimate government and the Russian invasion of Crimea Ukraine did not attack Crimea – some Ukrainians attacked some pro ‘Russian’ demonstrators – but mostly in Odesa AFAIK.
No what Russia did was to use that as an excuse – they had a plan and that preceded the 5 days period – so no the timeline argues that you are wrong.
Again no – there was no government with reach to the Donbas by March/April when the separatists first engaged with the Russians for help to start/organize a military insurrection – so no this was not Kyiv attacks being resisted.
A majority of Americans backed the Iraq invasion because they believed the lies, like they believed the lies in every one of the US’s wars.
Russia did not invade Crimea. 20,000 of the 22,000 soldiers of the Ukrainian territorial army in Crimea joined the rebellion to police the orderly conduct of the referendum and to make sure the N/zis didn’t get up to any funny business. Crimea re-united with Russia by a process that was far more democratic than German re-unification. Ukraine, on the other hand, annexed Crimea by force in 1995.
Following the fascist Maidan coup in Kyiv, spontaneous anti-Maidan protests took place in thousands of towns and villages all across the East and South and 5 independent republics were declared from Kharkiv in the North to Odessa in the South. Most republics were brutally suppressed by the Kyiv regime and it’s fascist forces. Only the LPR and the DPR resisted because parts of Ukraine’s territorial army in the Donbas joined the rebellion. At no time did the Russian army intervene. In fact, Putin opposed the referendums held in the LPR and DPR and always rejected all requests by the republics to join Russia, until Feb. 2022, when Ukraine started to launch an attack on the Donbas.
If the Western media does not report these events, it doesn’t mean they didn’t take place. It just means the Western public has to be kept in ignorance so as to support another illegal US war of aggression, as in Iraq.
US is not the west and most people in the west did not believe in the propaganda, unfortunately enough of them cared so little that our governments could progress to support the US in this war.
Even the Russians involved in the invasion acknowledge that they did.
OK so just an other conspiracy loon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Girkin#Crimea
Yes there were widespread counter protest demonstrations – but the notion that all of these paces wanted to secede from Ukraine is not supported by the evidence we have.
No because the Russian operatives entered and helped them organize – this is not western propaganda it is the story told by among others Igor Girkin a Russian soldier and FSB agent wo was deployed to Crimea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Girkin#Crimea
If you can read Russian much the same story is available from Igor Girkin’!
So the Russian attack is justified by the Ukrainian additional shelling practically all of which happened after the Russians had actually moved into the LDR, DPR and all of it happened after Putin had completed the build up of forces to invade – so the timeline is not working for you.
But western media does report them – only they report a story that is much easier to align with the near complete lack of celebrations the Russians were met with when the ‘liberated’ Ukrainian towns and the significant celebrations the Ukrainians were met with when the liberated towns after 8 months of Russian occupation – so perhaps the fault is with your sources?
In this clip you can here the former Russian ambassador to NATO explain that the people in Ukraine no longer sees the Russians as their brothers:
It’s not what the West believes the people want, it’s what the people themselves want that matters.
Let’s not fool ourselves, Kyiv isn’t going to give them a choice, not in a million years, because Kyiv knows exactly that it’ll lose. So, the referendums held recently are the only thing to go by.
Indeed and what they want is to be free of the Russians – I know that you think otherwise – and thus the war continues.
No we do not know anything like this – a lot of residents of these eastern areas fled to the west and even so there was still a Ukrainian ethnic majority in Luhansk and Donetsk – so no we do not know what the people of the Donetsk wants and nor what the Ukrainian government will do or allow.
Then I presume you disapprove of the eight years of attacks and shelling by Ukraine on its eastern Oblasts, correct?
I disapprove of the Russian backed armed separatist movement and the consequent shelling from both parties – you seem to believe this was quite one sided – why?
You are the one who believes it was one-sided. I have no such fantasies.
So claiming that there are two sides is being one sided now!?
Kind of, I believe we do support the notion of “one china” so eventual reunification is the plan. We don’t want it to happen by force.
“breakaway republics” are always problematic and get used both ways. We didn’t like it when the confederacy broke away, we did like it when Panama broke away from Colombia and so on and so forth.
Lol, the only thing the US is ok with is what the US is okay with; contradictions are irrelevant 🙂
Long process meaning long long time but I don’t think Ukraine will last that long.