MOSCOW: «There will be peace when we have achieved our goals». There appear to be no signs of détente coming from Vladimir Putin's end-of-year press conference, underway right now: the first since Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022, triggering a war that killed tens of thousands of people. Three months before the presidential elections scheduled for March 2024, the Kremlin leader has once again plunged into regime propaganda by claiming that the Ukrainian city of Odessa is “a Russian city” and repeating the unfounded thesis according to which the Kiev government is a den of fascists and the objective of Moscow's military aggression would be to “denazify” and “demilitarize” Ukraine.
«Ukraine is receiving many weapons – Putin continues –, but they will soon begin to run out. Everything that Western countries promised to provide to Kiev, they sent and even more. However, the Russian military continues to successfully destroy these weapons.”
Putin – who in these 24 years in power has dragged Russia towards an authoritarian drift – has however also tried to reassure Russian citizens by stating that there is no need for a mobilization of reservists at the moment. A move that would be unpopular. Last year, the Kremlin called up hundreds of thousands of conscripts, catapulting them into a war they never imagined they would have to fight.
The Russian president also tried to reassure voters on the economic front by declaring that “GDP growth is expected to be 3.5% by the end of the year”, but admitting that “inflation has increased” and this year it should settle between 7.5-8%. Then he raised the possibility that Western military supplies to Ukraine could be reduced or run out. “Ukraine produces almost nothing, everything comes from the West, but one day free things will end and it seems like that is already happening,” the Kremlin leader said.
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