🇷🇺President of Russia Vladimir Putin met with war correspondents at the Kremlin (June 13, 2023). Part I

Key points:

#Demilitarisation

📌 Demilitarisation. We are dealing with this gradually, methodically. What are the Armed Forces of Ukraine fighting with? Do they produce Leopards or Bradleys or the F-16s they haven’t received yet? They don’t produce a thing. The Ukrainian defence industry will soon cease to exist altogether. What do they produce? Ammunition is delivered, equipment is delivered and weapons are delivered – everything is delivered. You won't live long like that, you won't last.

📌 This is a large-scale counteroffensive, which uses, as I recently said publicly, reserves that had been stockpiled to this end. It started on June 4. In reality Ukraine has sustained heavier losses. By my calculations, these losses are about 25 or maybe 30 percent of the equipment supplied from abroad.

📌 Meanwhile, 🇷🇺 production is growing and the quality is improving. The specifications – the range and precision – are being improved.

#Border

📌 We need to strengthen the border, and if any of you work there, you surely can see that this process is moving quite quickly, and this task of strengthening the borders will also be solved.

📌 If shelling continues, then we will apparently have to consider the issue – and I say this very carefully – in order to create some kind of buffer zone on the territory of Ukraine at such a distance from which it would be impossible to reach 🇷🇺 territory.

#Dugina #UkrainianTerrorism

📌 Dasha Dugina, a good person, was killed, and it is an enormous tragedy. Was she a militant or something like that, did she fight with a weapon in hand? She was just an intellectual who expressed her point of view, her position.

📌 They just planted an explosive device under the bottom of the car, and that was it. By the way, this once again reaffirms the terrorist nature of the current regime in Kiev.

📌 We, unlike Ukraine’s current authorities, cannot employ terrorist methods: we still have a state, a country, while it is a regime there. They operate, in fact, as a regime based on terror: they have a very tough counterintelligence regime, martial law.

#Mobilisation

📌 The Defence Ministry says there is no need for mobilisation. Things that are happening took even me by surprise: after all, 156,000 people volunteered. You know, as we say, Russians saddle slow, but ride fast. People are volunteering to defend the Fatherland.

#RedLines

‼️In the end, they prompted us to try to use force to end the war that they started in 2014. They keep telling us, “You started the war, Putin is the aggressor.” No, they are the aggressors, they started this war, and we are trying to stop it, but we are compelled to do so with the use of the Armed Forces. Is this not the answer to their crossing the red lines?

#Ukraine

📌 Ukraine, such as it may be, does exist and we must treat it with respect. However, this does not mean that this is a reason for us being treated without respect. That is what it is about.

📌 If some of the people residing in these territories believe that they want to live in a separate and independent state, their preference must be treated with respect. The only question is why they should live at our expense and in our historical territories? If they want to live in our historical territories, then they should influence their political leadership so that it establishes proper relations with Russia and no one poses a threat to us from these territories. This is the issue.

📌 As for Ukraine, what Ukraine are you talking about? There was nothing at all there, there was no Ukraine. Ukraine appeared in 1922, as I said. Now the grateful descendants are smashing monuments to Lenin, the founder of Ukraine.