Putin speech today

[1/2] Russia's Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and other participants attend a ceremony to declare the annexation of the Russian-controlled territories of four Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, after holding what Russian authorities called referendums in the occupied areas... Read more MOSCOW, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday presided over a ceremony at the Kremlin to annex four Ukrainian regions partly occupied by his forces. Following are extracts from his speech, translated by Reuters: MESSAGE TO KYIV "I want the Kyiv authorities and their real masters in the West to hear me, so that they remember this. People living in Luhansk and Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are becoming our citizens. Forever. "We call on the Kyiv regime to immediately end hostilities, end the war that they unleashed back in 2014 and return to the negotiating table. "We are ready for this ... But we will not discuss the choice of the people in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. That has been made. Russia will not betray them." DEFENDING 'OUR LAND' "We will defend our land with all the powers and means at our disposal." 'NATION DISMEMBERED' "In 1991, at Belovezh Forest, without asking the will of ordinary citizens, representatives of the then-party elites decided to destroy the USSR, and people suddenly found themselves cut off from their motherland. This tore apart and dismembered our nation, becoming a national catastrophe ... "...

MOSCOW, Feb 21 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday delivered a warning to the West over Ukraine by suspending a landmark nuclear arms control treaty, announcing that new strategic systems had been put on combat duty, and threatening to resume nuclear tests. Nearly a year after ordering an invasion that has triggered the biggest confrontation with the West in six decades, Putin said Russia would achieve its aims and accused the West of trying to destroy it. "The elites of the West do not hide their purpose. But they also cannot fail to realise that it is impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield," he told his country's political and military elite. Alleging that the United States was turning the war into a global conflict, Putin said Russia was suspending participation in the Signed by then-U.S. president Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in 2010, the treaty caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the countries can deploy. Due to expire in 2026, it allows each country to physically check the other's nuclear arsenal, although tensions over Ukraine had already brought inspections to a halt. U.S. Secretary of State The Russian leader said, without citing evidence, that some in Washington were considering breaking a moratorium on nuclear testing. "... if the United States conducts tests, then we will. No one should have dangerous illusions that global strategic parity can be destroyed," Putin said. "A week ago, I signed a decre...

Putin argued that the era of "The previous world order is finished — irrespective of all the efforts to preserve it, it's a natural way of history," he told the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, an annual business meeting launched in 1997 as a Russian alternative to the World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland. A situation with "One strong power with a limited circle of countries [in support]" was "not stable," he said, adding that it was a mistake for the U.S. to have claimed victory in the Cold War and to have treated other countries "like colonies." Putin said the war in Ukraine, which he maintains was launched to protect Russian-speaking people in the country's east, was “the decision of a sovereign country based on the right to defend its security.” The U.S. has Costs were rising in the West "long before we launched the special military operation in the Donbas," he added, scoffing at the idea of a "Putin price rise" and sticking to his own narrow definition of the war that has now brought nearly four months of death and destruction to Russia's democratic neighbor. As he spoke, Russian forces were pressing their attacks on cities in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, an offensive that has seen Moscow's troops make painstaking gains behind a heavy artillery assault. But even with the battlefield advances, the Kremlin was dealt another diplomatic setback on Friday as the European Union's executive recommended putting Kyiv on a path to membership of t...

Russian President In some of his most detailed remarks about the war in months, the Russian leader also asserted that Ukrainian forces had suffered “catastrophic” losses in a new counteroffensive, and he said he was not contemplating a new troop mobilization, as many Russians have feared. But he did not rule out another troop call-up later. And he reiterated Russia’s claim that Ukraine was responsible for blowing up a Dnieper River dam that caused vast flooding on both sides of the front line last week in the country’s south. Putin’s comments at an open meeting with military journalists and bloggers followed Kyiv’s claims that Ukrainian troops had captured a handful of villages in the early stages of the counteroffensive as they seek to push Russian troops out of four regions of Ukraine the Kremlin illegally annexed last fall. The meeting, which lasted more than two hours, came after Russian missile strikes in central Ukraine killed at least 11 people overnight. Putin said Ukraine’s counteroffensive has been unsuccessful. He asserted that Ukraine lost 160 tanks and over 360 other armored vehicles, while Russia lost 54 tanks since the new assault began. Those claims could not be immediately verified. Ukrainian officials typically do not comment on losses. READ MORE: Russia’s improved weaponry and tactics pose challenges to Ukraine’s counteroffensive The White House offered no immediate reaction to Putin’s claims. A U.S. official familiar with American intelligence said Puti...

MOSCOW, June 9 (Reuters) - Russia will start deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus after special storage facilities are made ready on July 7-8, President Vladimir Putin said on Friday, Moscow's first move of such warheads outside Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. Putin announced in March he "Everything is going according to plan," Putin told Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, discussing the planned nuclear deployment over a meal at the Russian leader's summer retreat in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. "Preparation of the relevant facilities ends on July 7-8, and we will immediately begin activities related to the deployment of appropriate types of weapons on your territory," Putin said, according to a Kremlin transcript of his remarks. Lukashenko said: "Thank you, Vladimir Vladimirovich." More than 15 months into the biggest land war in Europe since World War Two, Putin says the United States and its Western allies are pumping arms into Ukraine as part of an expanding proxy war aimed at bringing Russia to its knees. Putin, 70, casts the war as a battle for Russia's own survival in the face of what he says is an ever-expanding NATO. He has warned the West that Moscow will not back down. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says Ukraine will not rest until every last Russian soldier is ejected from his country, and wants it to join NATO as soon as possible. Putin's nuclear move is being watched closely by both the United States and its NATO allies ...