Russia President Vladimir Putin said this Friday () that he sees no need for further massive attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure after destroying about one-third of the country’s electricity grid.
“Now there is no need for massive attacks. Now we have other targets, as of about 29 planned targets, only seven were not destroyed, according to the Defense Ministry’s plans,” Putin said at a press conference held after two weeks. days of regional summits in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan.
“But they are being completed, these objectives”, he added, in addition to stressing that later the possibility of further massive bombings could be reassessed.
Russia launched the large-scale attacks against Ukraine after denouncing a terrorist attack on the Crimean bridge on Saturday and blaming Kyiv for the authorship.
Asked if the “military operation Russian special” (the Kremlin does not use the term war) can cause Ukraine to cease to exist as a state, Putin said that “we never set out to annihilate it”.
“I want to make that clear. What is happening now is unpleasant, said softly, but if we hadn’t done it now, we would have been forced to do it later, but under much worse conditions for us,” he claimed.
“We are acting correctly and in a timely manner”, argued Putin, who also assured that he did not regret carrying out the military offensive against Ukraine, despite the setbacks faced by Russian troops.
Mobilization partial ends in two weeks
The Russian president also said in Astana that the partial mobilization he ordered in September 21 on the occasion of the war in Ukraine will be completed in about two weeks and which has no plans to extend it.
“A total of 222 thousand people from 300 1,000 have already been mobilized” for military purposes, and “all mobilization activities will be completed in approximately two weeks,” Putin said at the press conference. The Kremlin chief stressed that no further mobilization is planned.
“Firstly, the Ministry of Defense initially proposed a smaller number, not 300 thousand people. Second, nothing further is planned. The Ministry of Defense has not proposed anything in this direction, and in the near future I don’t see any need,” he said.
Putin said that, currently, 33 one thousand of the 222 thousand mobilized are in military training units and 16 thousand in detachments that already serve in combat missions.
In response to numerous allegations that mobilized citizens are being sent to the front without any military training, he announced that he would instruct the Russian Security Council to carry out an inspection of how mobilized citizens are trained. “All citizens called for recruitment must receive training,” he emphasized.
The recruitment office of the Chelyabinsk region confirmed to Russian news agency Tass the death of five recruits, none of whom, according to the BBC’s Russian service, which cites statements by relatives, had received military training before being sent to the front lines in Ukraine.
