Russian President Vladimir Putin called proposals for a mutual halt to strikes absurd. During a plenary session of the Valdai Club on October 1, he also repeated a number of Kremlin claims about the war against Ukraine and confrontation with the West.
This was reported by Russian media.
Putin claimed that events in Ukraine were allegedly “aggression by the collective West against Russia”. He repeated the claim that Russia did not start the war, but that “war was started against Russia”, and that Moscow was allegedly put in a situation where it was forced to “defend itself with weapons in hand”.
According to him, Moscow is monitoring where weapons supplied to Ukraine are coming from, but this does not mean that Russia will strike the relevant facilities “tomorrow”.
Putin also claimed that “Ukraine cannot exist independently and is generally losing elements of statehood”.
Speaking about strikes on Russian vessels in the Black Sea, he described Russia’s response with the phrase “here you go, fascist, have a grenade”.
Separately, Putin claimed that Russian forces “have always followed humanitarian norms” and allegedly “have never been the first to attack non-military targets”.
He also said that if there were a direct attack on Russia, the question of using all weapons available to Russia would “inevitably” arise. At the same time, Putin claimed that Russia “is not going to attack anyone” in 2029, 2030 or 2050.
