In an interview with Pavel Zarubin on June 28th, Russian President Putin gave a rather detailed picture of the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine, the great progress being made, and also expressed a clear determination that he was not in any rush to move to a peace agreement unless there was assurance of having accomplished the goals of “liberating Donbass and Novorossiya.” Putin noted the various proposals coming out of the Western forces: stopping fighting at the present line of contact or having a meeting with Zelensky, short of Zelensky coming to Moscow. These have been rejected outright as incompatible with the present situation.
Putin indicated to Zarubin that there had been other proposals, namely, that both sides should cease carrying out long-range attacks or that the two sides should limit hostilities to four regions, the Kherson and Zaporoshiye regions and Donetsk and Lugansk. While he indicated that Moscow was paying attention to all proposals put out by the other side, he seemed to reject these as well.
Regarding the first he said, “Our retaliatory strikes deep inside Ukrainian territory are far more powerful, more effective and, frankly, more destructive, resulting in genuinely serious consequences for the Kiev regime,” indicating that ceasing these would be more beneficial to Ukraine than to Russia. On the second, Putin noted that stopping hostilities in those regions would allow the Ukrainians to move their forces from the Sumy, Dnepropetrovsk, Nikolaev, and Kharkov regions to strengthen their forces in those areas of open conflict. “Given the Ukrainian armed forces’ catastrophic manpower shortage,” he said, “they apparently believe this could provide them with a lifeline. But rescuing the Kiev regime is not part of our plans.”
