MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia urged Ukrainian troopers to put down their arms, whereas describing the federal government of President Volodymyr Zelensky as “a band of drug addicts and neo-Nazis.”
Russian state tv aired temporary remarks by Mr. Putin as he spoke by video to his Safety Council. Mr. Putin — apparently attempting to assuage fears within the Russian public of a bloody conflict with a neighbor — claimed that many of the Russian military’s combating up to now had been with “nationalist teams,” not with the common Ukrainian military.
“Take energy into your personal fingers,” he stated, addressing Ukrainian troopers. “It appears to be like like it is going to be simpler for us to come back to an settlement with you than with this gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis who lodged themselves in Kyiv and took the complete Ukrainian individuals hostage.”
Mr. Putin’s brutal language instructed that he was not significantly planning to interact Mr. Zelensky in peace talks, regardless of the Kremlin’s provide earlier within the day. In a unexpectedly scheduled name with reporters Friday night, a Kremlin spokesman stated that whereas Russia had proposed talks in Minsk, Belarus, the Ukrainian facet requested to carry them in Warsaw as an alternative. Then, he stated, Ukrainian officers “took a pause” in speaking and have now been out of contact for “a relatively very long time.”
Throughout this time, Mr. Peskov claimed, the Ukrainian navy had been organising multiple-launch rocket techniques in residential neighborhoods in Kyiv and elsewhere.
“We imagine this case to be extraordinarily harmful,” Mr. Peskov stated, taking no questions.