On the heels of the meetings with U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and the efforts to open talks toward a peaceful settlement between Russia and Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin commented on the situation in an Oct. 22 interview with journalist Pavel Zarubin. Zarubin asked Putin about the statement by acting Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky the night before—which is being called a type of concession in the Western media—when he told Fox News that he would be willing to “freeze” the conflict along the current lines, even if it meant losing 25% of Ukraine territory. Putin’s response was to say that, after these provinces in the Donbass and Novorossiya voted for independence and to join the Russian Federation, “this isn’t their [Ukraine’s] territory” and any discussion of territorial losses is “inappropriate.” He observed that “some of our ill-wishers,” especially in Europe, had taken that fact as an excuse to “constantly talk about the Russian threat and the beginning of preparations for war with Russia, which in my view is some kind of political schizophrenia. But I hope that this too will pass.”

Putin voiced the hard truth that “it is impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield and unrealistic to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.” He said he thinks the people who have sought those goals will realize that it is better to live in friendship with Russia. The political turmoil in Europe, in his view, makes clear that the people of Europe do not want to fight with Russia. “I want us to be heard,” he added: “Neither do we want, nor are we preparing, for any war with Europe.”

As for the current leaders in Ukraine, said Putin, “it’s incomprehensible why they have decided that the whole world should be paying them, fighting for them, arming them,” etc. “They want to fight? We don’t want to fight with Ukraine. But if today’s Ukrainian leadership wants to fight, let them fight. But why do they think everybody should pay, and give them weapons?”