Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that he saw no need for more massive attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure after destroying about a third of the country’s power grid.
“Now there is no need for massive attacks. Now we have other targets, as out of about 29 planned targets, only seven were not destroyed, according to the Defense Ministry’s plans,” Putin said at a press conference given after two days of regional summits in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan.
“But they are being completed, these objectives”, he added, in addition to stressing that later the possibility of new massive bombings could be reassessed.
Russia launched the large-scale attacks against Ukraine after denouncing a terrorist attack on the Crimea bridge on Saturday and blaming Kyiv for the perpetrator.
Asked whether Russia’s “special military operation” (the Kremlin doesn’t use the term war) could cause Ukraine to cease to exist as a state, Putin said that “we never set out to annihilate it.”
“I want to make this clear. What is happening now is unpleasant, said softly, but if we hadn’t done it now, we would have been forced to do it later, but under much worse conditions for us,” she claimed.
“We are acting correctly and in a timely manner,” argued Putin, who also assured that he did not regret carrying out the military offensive against Ukraine, despite the setbacks faced by Russian troops.
Partial mobilization ends in two weeks
The Russian president also said in Astana that the partial mobilization he ordered on Sept. 21 on the occasion of the war in Ukraine would be completed in about two weeks and that he had no plans to extend it.
“A total of 222,000 people out of 300,000 have already been mobilized” for military purposes, and “all mobilization activities will be completed in approximately two weeks,” Putin said at the press conference. The Kremlin chief stressed that no further mobilization is planned.
“First, the Ministry of Defense initially proposed a smaller number, not 300,000 people. Second, nothing further is planned. The Ministry of Defense has not proposed anything in this direction, and in the near future I do not see any need,” he said.
Putin said that currently 33,000 of the 222,000 deployed are in military training units and 16,000 in detachments that already serve in combat missions.
In response to numerous allegations that mobilized citizens are being sent to the front without any military training, he announced that he would instruct the Russian Security Council to carry out an inspection of how mobilized citizens are trained. “All citizens called for recruitment must receive training,” he emphasized.
The recruitment office of the Chelyabinsk region confirmed to Russian news agency Tass the death of five recruits, none of whom, according to the Russian service of the British network BBC, which cites statements by relatives, had received military training before being sent to the frontline in Ukraine.
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