On Dec. 27, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a special visit to a Russian military command post in the SMO zone, dressed in full military fatigues, where he received a report by Chief of the General Staff of Russia’s Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov, the Kremlin reported. While Putin has conducted a number of such high-profile meetings with his General Staff over the recent months, the message, coming just hours before Ukrainian President Zelensky was to meet with U.S. President Trump, was unmistakable.
Putin also heard reports from the commanders of the Centre and East forces, as well as unit commanders, on the progress of their missions. It is claimed that the towns of Dimitrov in Donetsk and Gulyaipole in Zaporozhye Region have been liberated. Gulyaipole is the second largest city in the Zaporozhye Region, so its liberation opens up good prospects for an offensive, explained TASS.
But what was most significant from the meeting were the remarks by President Putin. After hearing all the reports from his commanders, Putin concluded the publicly recorded part of the event with an unmistakable message (according to machine translation): “Now we see that smart people have also appeared in the West who recommend that the Kiev authorities accept decent conditions for ending the conflict and provide good basic conditions for ensuring Ukraine’s security in the long term, conditions for restoring relations with the Russian Federation and restoring Ukraine’s economy. But we see that even today, unfortunately, the leaders of the Kiev regime are in no hurry to resolve this conflict by peaceful means. I spoke about this a year ago, speaking at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But today, judging by your reports, judging by the pace we are seeing on the line of contact, our interest in the withdrawal of Ukrainian military formations from the territories they currently occupy is virtually zero. For a variety of reasons. And if the Kiev authorities do not want to end the matter peacefully, we will resolve all the tasks before us through a special military operation by armed means.”
