Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed to the United States a “duel” between the new Russian hypersonic weapons and Western missile defense systems, the scenario of which would be the Ukrainian capital, kyiv.
“Let them choose any installation for us to attack, let’s say, in kyiv. Let them concentrate all their anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems there. And we will attack with (a missile) Oreshnik. And we will see what happens. We are prepared for that experiment” Putin said during his annual press conference.
The Russian president has made it clear that he has no intention of making any kind of gesture in relation to the invasion of Ukraine, a scenario where he believes that “the situation is changing drastically” and in favor of Moscow’s interests.
According to Putin, the forces advance “daily” on the main fronts and at a pace of “square kilometers”, not hundreds of meters. In this sense, he has made it clear that Russia remains determined to meet the objectives it set when its troops entered the neighboring country in February 2022.
Likewise, he has promised that they will “liberate” the Russian region of Kursk, the scene of a military incursion since the beginning of August, and will “completely” eliminate Ukrainian forces. Putin, however, has avoided setting a date for the recovery of the area.
Willing to meet with Trump
The head of the Kremlin has expressed his willingness to meet “at any time” with the elected president of the United States, Donald Trump.
“We have not spoken for four years. I am willing to do so (talk) at any time and to meet, too,” the Russian leader said in his final press conference of the year.
Putin acknowledged that he still does not know when the eventual meeting would take place, because Trump “has not said anything” about it.
In any case, he was convinced that both will have “something to talk about.”
“If we ever meet with President-elect Trump, I’m sure we’ll have something to talk about.“he insisted.
Last week the Kremlin reported that the Russian leader had not received any invitation from Trump to attend his inauguration, which will take place on January 20.
The last meeting between the two took place in June 2019 on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Japan.
Trump, who recently met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, has repeatedly said that one of his priorities after returning to the White House will be ending the war in Ukraine.
Putin denies that Assad’s overthrow
He also denies that the overthrow of the Syrian leader, Bashar al Assad, represents a defeat for Russia in the Arab country.
“I assure you that this is not the case… Russia has, broadly speaking, achieved its objectives in Syria,” Putin said during the annual news conference, adding that he has not yet met with Assad, who was granted asylum. in this country on December 8, but he plans to do so.
Russia is considered, along with Iran, the great loser in the fall of the Assad regime, whose army was defeated by the Islamist rebels in less than two weeks.
Putin, who decided to help Assad militarily in September 2015, stressed that the Russian army was deployed in Syria “ten years ago so that a terrorist enclave would not be created there.”
At the same time, he admitted that the situation is changing rapidly in Syria and that even the groups that have fought against Damascus since 2011 have also “experienced internal changes.”
“It is not in vain that many European countries and the US want to establish relations with them. If they are terrorist organizations, why do they get involved there? That means that they have changed,” he said.
The Duma or chamber of deputies approved this week a law that allows the Levant Liberation Organization (Hayat Tahrir al Sham), which now controls the situation in Damascus, to be excluded from the list of terrorist organizations, something that the Chechen leader has already requested. Ramzan Kadyrov.
Regarding the Russian military bases in Syria, he assured that “most of the groups” in Syria have conveyed to Moscow that “they would be interested” in them remaining there, but he clarified that the Kremlin has not yet made a decision on the matter.
“I don’t know, we should think about it, since we still have to decide how relations will develop with those political forces that now control or will control the situation in the country in the future. Our interests must coincide,” he said.
Putin also revealed that Russian troops evacuated some 4,000 Iranian soldiers to Tehran from the Khmeimim air base in Latakia province.
