President Vladimir Putin said on Friday Russia’s strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure were “inevitable” as the Kremlin rejected US President Joe Biden’s terms for talks and warned the assault would continue.
After suffering humiliating military defeats during what has become the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II, Russia began targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure in October, causing sweeping blackouts.
Speaking with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for the first time since mid-September, Putin slammed what he called the West’s “destructive” policies in Ukraine and said Russian strikes were a response to “provocative” attacks from Kyiv.
Moscow “had long refrained from precision missile strikes against certain targets on the territory of Ukraine”, Putin told Scholz, according to a Kremlin readout of the phone talks.
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