The liberated city of Izium, Ukraine on December 22, 2022 ( AFP / SERGEY BOBOK )
The Kremlin on Thursday lamented a lack of “willingness to listen to Russia” after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the United States, while Vladimir Putin said he wanted to end the conflict “as soon as possible”.
On the way back to his country, Zelenskyy met Polish leader Andrzej Duda in Poland before arriving in Ukraine a few hours later.
“We’re coming back from Washington with good results. With something that will really help,” he said in a video shot in Poland, referring to the delivery of an American Patriot missile system that Kyiv had been asking for months.
For his part, Russian President Vladimir Putin brushed aside the benefits of this “rather old system” for Ukraine.
“Our opponents assume it’s a defensive weapon. Well, we’ll keep that in mind. And there’s always an antidote,” he said.
“It’s just a way to prolong the conflict, that’s all,” Putin said, but said he wanted to end the fighting in Ukraine quickly.
“We will strive to ensure this ends. And of course the sooner the better,” he said.
In Washington, the chief of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, responded to this statement by saying that the Kremlin had shown no “significant” desire to end this war.
“Today, Russia has shown basically no interest in meaningful diplomacy” to end the war, he said.
In Poland, during his meeting with Mr. Duda, President Zelensky said that he discussed with him the events of the past year, but also “discussed strategic plans for the future, bilateral relations and interactions at the international level in 2023”.
US Vice President Kamala Harris (L) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi applaud Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after his speech to the US Congress in Washington December 21, 2022 (AFP / Jim WATSON)
On Wednesday, during his trip to Washington, his first trip abroad since the Russian offensive began in February, the Ukrainian president received a heroic welcome, spoke with his counterpart Joe Biden and delivered a speech to the applause of American lawmakers.
He also received promises of a massive nearly $45 billion support package and new arms shipments.
– “Russia’s troubles” –
“So far, we regret to note that neither President Biden nor President Zelenskyy have said anything that could be perceived as a potential willingness to listen to Russia’s concerns,” Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.
Military aid commitments to Ukraine for the top 20 countries according to the Kiel Institute for Political Security (AFP/)
According to him, during that visit there were no “genuine calls for peace” or American “warnings” to Mr. Zelensky about “the continued bombing of homes in populated areas of Donbass,” a region in eastern Ukraine partially controlled by pro-Russian separatists.
“It shows that the United States is continuing its actual and indirect line of war with Russia to the last Ukrainian,” the spokesman added.
On Wednesday, the day of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s US visit, the Kremlin warned that further US arms sales to Ukraine would only “exacerbate” the conflict.
Mr Zelensky, meanwhile, had said that Western aid to his country was an “investment in global security and democracy” and “not charity”.
Also in Rome, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said she plans to visit Ukraine in early 2023.
On the ground, Russia has suffered severe setbacks in recent months.
Russian President Vladimir Putin during a meeting with senior military officials in Moscow, December 21, 2022 (Sputnik/Vadim SAVITSKY)
In response, from October it decided on a tactic of massively bombing Ukraine’s infrastructure, depriving millions of people of electricity, water and heating in the dead of winter.
Those cuts particularly affected the capital, Kyiv, where the energy situation remained “difficult,” according to the head of the military administration, Serguiï Popko, on Thursday.
To stem the momentum of Kyiv, Washington also confirmed on Thursday that the paramilitary group Wagner, which is present in Ukraine, received a shipment of arms from North Korea “last month”, so it will soon become a power rival with the regular Russian army.
– Inspection in Ukraine –
Map showing the main ports in Ukraine, including Berdyansk and Mariupol, where Russia will build naval bases, as well as the main ports in other countries around the Black Sea (AFP/)
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu went on an inspection of Russian positions in Ukraine, his ministry said Thursday, without specifying the exact location or date of that trip.
He had been in the “special operation” area a few days earlier, a sign of Moscow’s desire for closer control of its soldiers there.
A building destroyed by a strike in Bakhmout, on December 22, 2022 in eastern Ukraine (AFP / Sameer Al-DOUMY)
For his part, Chief of Staff Valeri Guerassimov confirmed that the goal of Russian forces in Ukraine is now to conquer the entire industrial region of Donetsk. He said he saw a “stabilization” of the front line, which he said was 815 kilometers long.
In the east, the ex-head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, was wounded in a Ukrainian attack on a hotel in Donetsk, one of the pro-Russian separatist strongholds.
Map of the situation in Ukraine as of December 22 at 8am GMT (AFP /)
For Moscow, this strike, in which several other people were injured, some of them fatally, was “probably” carried out with French Caesar guns, several of which were delivered to Ukraine.
According to the Russian occupation administration, a head of a Ukrainian town under Russian control was also killed in a bomb attack in the Kherson region (south) on Thursday.