German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, however, declared that the risk of nuclear weapons being used in the Ukraine conflict has lessened thanks to international pressure heaped on Russia.
“One thing has changed for the time being: Russia has stopped threatening to use nuclear weapons,” Scholz said in an interview with Germany’s Funke media group, saying it was “in response to the international community marking a red line”.
“The priority now is for Russia to end the war immediately and withdraw its troops,” he added.
AZOV SEA
Intense shelling continued along the front in eastern Ukraine, with President Volodymyr Zelensky announcing that strikes in Donetsk region’s Kurakhove killed 10 civilians on Wednesday.
“The Russian army carried out a very brutal, absolutely deliberate strike at Kurakhove, precisely at civilians,” the president – who was named Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” earlier in the day – said during his nightly address.
The shelling in Kurakhove comes a day after Ukrainian artillery strikes killed six people in the Donetsk region’s capital city of the same name, according to the Moscow-installed mayor.
Moscow had expected the fighting to last just days, but more than nine months after its forces entered Ukraine, Putin said its military operation could be a “lengthy process”.
But he praised the announced annexation of four Ukrainian territories following September referendums held by Moscow proxies – denounced in the West as a sham.
“New territories appeared – well, this is still a significant result for Russia,” Putin said, referring to Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
He also made special reference to Russia’s gaining control of all the land along the Azov Sea.
“The Azov Sea has become an internal sea to the Russian Federation, that’s a serious thing,” he noted.
Despite its best efforts, Russian troops at no point have entirely controlled any of the annexed territories and were even forced out from the capital of Kherson after a months-long Ukraine counter-offensive.
Amid domestic fears of a new callup – which triggered an exodus of Russians abroad in September to avoid an emergency draft – Putin said “there is no need” for a new mobilisation.
“Out of 300,000 of our mobilised fighters, our men, defenders of the fatherland, 150,000 are in the area of operations,” including 77,000 in combat units, he said.
PERSON OF THE YEAR
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