Global Courant
In a rare wide-ranging interview with war correspondents and military bloggers, President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday portrayed the Russian military as steadfast in the face of a long-planned Ukrainian counteroffensive, suggesting the conflict was fulfilling his goals. initially set.
“The enemy was unsuccessful in any of the sectors,” Putin said of the Ukrainian offensive that has been rolling out in recent days, instead suffering huge losses to Russia’s relatively few.
Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with Russian war journalists in Moscow, Russia, June 13, 2023. (Russia, Moscow) EFE/EPA/GAVRIIL GRIGOROV / SPUTNIK /
As for tanks, for example, he said Ukraine had lost 160 to Russia’s 54, adding that some of the latter could be repaired.
His claims have not been able to be independently confirmed.
Putin has addressed virtually every aspect of the conflict in recent weeks.
He chose a format he has rarely used, allowing 18 reporters to ask questions about the war for more than two hours, in a style reminiscent of his annual performance on “Línea Directa,” when he answers questions from across the country for hours.
Russia did not need to recruit more soldiers because it had attracted some 156,000 contractors or other volunteers since January, he said, in addition to the 300,000 recruited last year.
Trying to make the best of the fact that Russia has suffered repeated setbacks in both men and weapons, he suggested that the country had learned valuable lessons about how to better organize its armed forces.
He admitted that cross-border attacks from Ukraine by Russian partisans had been detrimental, suggesting with some bravado that Russia might have to carve out an “exclusion zone” on the Ukrainian side of the border to prevent its artillery from reaching Russia.
threats
At one point he also suggested that the Russian army might again have to march on kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.
Russian forces were driven out of Kiev after failing to take it as promised in just days after a full-scale invasion in February 2022, losing a large area around the eastern city of Kharkiv to a Ukrainian offensive. last fall.
To Nikolai Petrov, a seasoned political analyst, the whole effort sounded as if Putin was trying to show that he was a commander-in-chief fully in control of events on the ground.
More importantly, Petrov speculated that the remarks could be a prelude to seeking negotiations by implying that the Ukrainian counter-offensive was doomed to fail.
Since correspondents and bloggers are trusted far more by the general public than the Defense Ministry, their choice of interlocutors, along with their dismissal of details such as the number of Russian tanks destroyed, was designed to create the appearance of unbiased analysis. Petrov said.
“There is no reason for him to show himself so publicly and give such detailed explanations, unless he is trying to target a Western or Ukrainian audience,” he said.
“The idea is to show that he is the commander in chief who knows everything about everything.”
Putin claimed that Russia was doing a great job of demilitarizing Ukraine despite its Western supporters.
He admitted various information that was previously an open secret, such as the pardons he was granting to convicts who had fought for the Wagner mercenary group.
Much of what he said was not new, such as the threat to withdraw from a deal that has allowed Ukraine to export millions of tons of grain from its Black Sea ports despite Russian control of waterways, saying it was only He did it because much of the world needed the grain.
He noted that military production had increased 2.7 times, and in some cases 10 times, he said, using a somewhat bizarre anecdote to illustrate its quality.
A Russian T-90 tank that hit a land mine was unharmed, although the person inside was hit so hard he died, Putin said.
mercenaries
In the latest chapter of the dispute between Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Yevgeny Prigozhin, the pugnacious founder of the Wagner private military force, Prigozhin rejected a call by the Defense Ministry for all such organizations to sign contracts by 1 of July.
The move was seen as an effort by the ministry to extend some control over these forces, which are technically illegal in Russia, while granting them full military benefits.
Putin said that he supported the request that the paramilitary organizations sign such contracts.
Petrov suggested that Putin was using Prigozhin as a foil, making the president seem the more temperate figure as the mercenary commander repeatedly calls for intensifying attacks on Ukraine and putting the economy on a war footing.
“It’s his style, before any negotiation, to let his guy say something horrible to make himself look better,” Petrov said.
c.2023 The New York Times Company
