Putin jabs at West over Ukraine war, says operation going to plan

Russian President Vladimir Putin is showing no regrets for the war against neighbour Ukraine, insisting it is going to plan and playing down any nuclear standoff with the West.

Vladimir Putin, in remarks at a conference in Moscow on Thursday, had a familiar litany of grievances against “our Western opponents” and said the West’s dominance over world affairs was coming to an end.

Putin accused the West of inciting the war in Ukraine and of playing a “dangerous, bloody and dirty” game that was sowing chaos across the world. Ultimately, Putin said, the West would have to talk to Russia and other major powers about the future of the world.

“We are standing at a historical frontier: Ahead is probably the most dangerous, unpredictable and, at the same time, important decade since the end of World War Two,” the 70-year-old former KGB spy said at an annual foreign policy conference.

The conflict, which began eight months ago with an invasion by Russian forces of neighbouring Ukraine, has killed thousands, displaced millions, shaken the global economy and reopened Cold War-era divisions.

Meanwhile, Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure were forcing electricity cuts in the capital Kyiv and other places, officials said.

The missile and drone attacks would not break Ukrainian spirits, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a Thursday night video address as he stood outside in the dark next to the wreckage of a downed drone.

“Shelling will not break us – to hear the enemy’s anthem on our land is scarier than the enemy’s rockets in our sky. We are not afraid of the dark,” he said.

Early on Friday, the Ukrainian military provided a summary of battlefield action in the southern province of Kherson, where Ukrainian and Russian forces have been preparing for weeks for what could be one of the most consequential battles of the war.

Ukrainian forces killed 44 Russian servicemen in the past 24 hours, according to Facebook post by the Ukrainian Armed Forces for the south. Ukrainian artillery and missile forces destroyed an ammunition depot and a hangar with equipment, the statement said.

Reuters was not able to verify battlefield reports.

Asked at the conference whether there had been any disappointments in the past year, Putin answered simply: “No”, though he also said he always thinks about the Russian lives lost in Ukraine.

In response to questions, Putin made no mention of Russia’s battlefield setbacks in recent months and said Russian aims had not changed.

Russia was fighting to protect the people of the Donbas, he said, referring to an eastern industrial region that comprises two of the four Ukrainian provinces he proclaimed annexed last month.

Fighting has been going on in the Donbas since 2014 between the Ukrainian military and Russian-backed separatists. Russia annexed the southern Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.

The Kherson provincial capital city of the same name controls both the only land route to Crimea and the mouth of the Dnipro, the river that bisects Ukraine.