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

Key points:

#WesternMateriel

🔥Like I said earlier, losses include over 160 tanks and 360 infantry fighting vehicles. This is not all NATO equipment. It also includes Soviet-made armoured vehicles. As we anticipated, Bradleys and Leopards burn just fine. You may have seen the ammunition inside the tanks blow up and everything fly in all directions. Like I said: 25–30 percent of the supplied equipment has been destroyed.

#DepletedUraniumShells

📌If we need to, we can do this; I can say that we are capable of doing this. But there is no need for us to do this today.

📌 As regards depleted uranium shells, it can be explained like this: there are simply no other shells left.

📌 I think this is what dictated the desire to supply shells with depleted uranium. The cheapest approach is to do nothing. There are such shells in warehouses, they can send them to Ukraine, and that’s it. And they do not care what happens there. They behave like this everywhere. Remember what they did in #Yugoslavia? And what did they do in #Syria or #Iraq? They did the same thing: they do not care. They have nothing but their own interests, and the interests of their allies do not interest them at all.

#US

🇺🇸The Americans behave very pragmatically, and everything they do is in their own interests alone; they do not care about the interests of their allies. They have no allies; they only have vassals. And their vassals are beginning to realise what role they are destined for. In fact, they do not really like all this, at the level of public consciousness.

🇷🇺 ship, which was guarding the TurkStream, the gas pipeline that runs to Turkey, was attacked by 🇺🇦 semi-submersible drones. At that same time, we saw an unmanned aerial vehicle belonging to 🇺🇸 strategic intelligence hovering high above, in the neutral zone. Apparently, it was correcting the movements of these drones.

‼️The United States is getting more and more involved in this conflict, almost directly involved, provoking serious international security crises. Correcting the movements of drones that are attacking our warships is a very serious risk. This is very serious, and they should know that we know about it. We will think about what to do with this in the future.

☝️ In fact, there are many people in the U.S. who think clearly and are unwilling to lead the world into a third world war in which there will be no winners; even the United States will not come out of it as a winner.

#GrainDeal

📌 As far as the grain deal is concerned, we think about terminating our participation in it.

📌 We are doing this not for the sake of Ukraine but for the sake of friendly countries in Africa and Latin America because this grain should primarily be sent to the world’s poorest states. That said, we were promised that our grain would not be subjected to reprisals, if I may say so, that there would be no obstacles to exporting it. Unfortunately, we were cheated once again.

❌ Nothing was done to facilitate our grain supplies to external markets. I am referring to chartering vessels, their insurance, payments, including connecting Rosselkhozbank to SWIFT. There were many terms that the Westerners were supposed to fulfil under UN guidance, but nothing was done.

📌 Only a little over 3 percent of the total volume of Ukrainian grain went to the poorest countries.

📌 Regarding the African countries, they get almost nothing, too. This is why we are now thinking about how we can get out of this grain deal. Moreover, the corridors for these cargo ships are constantly used by the enemy to launch naval drones.

#PeaceSettlement

❗️We have never refused – as I said a thousand times – to participate in any talks that may lead to a peace settlement. We have always said so. Moreover, during the talks in Istanbul, we initialed this document.