Putin: Russia Wants End to War As Soon As Possible

By Staff, Agencies

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin says Moscow is after a potential diplomatic settlement of the war in Ukraine.

Putin told reporters on Thursday Russia wanted an end to all armed conflicts through diplomacy. “Our goal is not to spin the flywheel of military conflict, but, on the contrary, to end this war,” the president said. “We will strive for an end to this, and the sooner the better, of course.”

“I have said many times: the intensification of hostilities leads to unjustified losses.”

“All armed conflicts end one way or another with some kind of negotiations on the diplomatic track,” Putin said.

“Sooner or later, any parties in a state of conflict sit down and make an agreement. The sooner this realization comes to those who oppose us, the better. We have never given up on this.”

Senior Russian officials have persistently said Moscow is open to negotiations. To Russia, it is Ukraine that is refusing to talk.

The Russian president made the remarks a day after Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky visited the White House.

During a lightning trip to Washington on Wednesday, Zelensky met with President Joe Biden and addressed Congress, urging the White House to supply Ukraine with “more weapons” in its 10-month-long war with Russia.

Putin also played down the significance of the Patriot air defense system Biden agreed to supply to Zelensky, saying Russia would find a way to counter it. The president said it was “quite old” and did not work like Russia's S-300 system. “OK, we will take this into account and an antidote will always be found.”

“Those who are confronting us say this is a defensive weapon... there will always be an antidote. So, the people who are doing this are doing it in vain. It's just prolonging the conflict, that's all,” Putin told reporters.

At a press conference on Thursday, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Ukrainian president and his American counterpart were turning a deaf ear to “Russia’s concerns.”

Regarding Moscow's conditions in the peace talks, Russian diplomats say demilitarization of the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics in eastern Ukraine, collectively known as Donbas, is among the main conditions Moscow has stated to end the war. The two regions broke away from Ukraine in 2014 after refusing to recognize a Western-backed Ukrainian government that had overthrown a democratically-elected Russia-friendly administration.

Russia says it is not after occupying Ukraine. Moscow has blamed the war on US and NATO intervention that left Russia no other way but to take military action.