The Ukrainian Army did not listen to the Russian president’s request to lay down their arms, and now Vladimir Putin is asking them to stage a coup. “Take the power in your hands. It will be easier for us to reach an agreement with you than with this gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis who occupied Kiev and took the entire Ukrainian people hostage,” the president said, staring into the camera during a meeting of his Council of Security, where he heard the latest news from the front. On the second day of the invasion of Ukraine, Russian troops have already arrived in Kiev, but the Ukrainian Army is reluctant to surrender.
“I once again appeal to the personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Don’t let neo-Nazis and Banderivtsi use your children, wives and elders as human shields,” Putin said, referring to Stepan Bandera, one of the leaders of the Ukrainian nationalists who collaborated with the Axis in World War II. According to the Kremlin’s discourse, Ukrainian extremists control the country’s power, although the reality is that in the 2019 elections the far-right Svoboda party, one of the main protagonists of the Maidan protests, barely exceeded 2.1% of the vote. the votes.
The Ukrainian government proposed to the Russian to negotiate its status of neutrality in exchange for peace. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, confirmed that the president is willing to speak with the Ukrainian authorities in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, but this does not mean a truce. According to the spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zajarova, “the actions that were ordered by the president at the beginning of the special operations have not been annulled, they are relevant.”
Hours earlier, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, had stressed during a press conference that Zelensky “has already lost his chance” and that the negotiations would only resume “after the restoration of democratic order.”
The Russian president’s spokesman also hinted that the idea of negotiating in Belarus under the mediation of Aleksandr Lukashenko’s regime could end up dead. “After a pause, the Ukrainians reconsidered going to Warsaw, and then they completely disconnected again,” said Peskov, who accused the Zelensky government of using the negotiation to defend itself: “This pause has been accompanied by the fact that the nationalist elements are deploying multiple rocket launchers in residential areas, including in Kiev.”
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Putin himself delved into this idea during the Security Council to ensure that if there are more civilian victims in the cities, it will be the fault of the Ukrainians. “They plan to return fire from Russian strike systems from residential areas. They act just like terrorists in the rest of the world, they hide behind the people hoping to later blame Russia for the civilian casualties,” the president said, accusing foreign consultants, “especially Americans, of being behind it.” ”.
The statements by the Russian authorities raise some doubts about the military actions. The press reports from Defense Ministry sources that “no rocket fell on Kiev”, although hours before the capital’s mayor, Vitali Klichkó, showed a photo of a destroyed residential building; and no Russian military casualties have yet been reported, despite images of bodies in some fighting. Likewise, the only lost plane was due, according to Moscow, to “human error”.
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said Friday that, according to data handled by London, Russia would have lost about 450 soldiers in two days of offensive. The spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense ironically stated that the judgments of the British senior official on the effectiveness of the Russian operation “are no deeper than their historical knowledge of the Battle of Balaclava (Crimea, 1854)”, where the United Kingdom participated, and assured that it was only a justification for “the millions of pounds ineptly spent on training the Ukrainian troops.” However, two days later, the war continues.
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