Russia lashes out on the West, warns Ukraine to fulfil its territorial demands

A day after President Vladimir Putin said he was open to negotiations over Ukraine, Russia’s foreign minister lashed out saying Kyiv and the West sought to destroy his country and Ukraine must meet Moscow’s demands or its army will.

Kyiv and its Western allies have dismissed Putin’s offer to speak, along with his forces battering Ukrainian towns with missiles and rockets and Moscow continuing to demand that Kyiv recognise its conquest of a fifth of the country.

Kyiv says it should fight until Russia withdraws.

“Our proposals for the demilitarization and denazification of the territories controlled by the regime, the elimination of threats to Russia’s security emanating from there, including our recent lands, are well-known to the enemy,” state news agency TASS quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying late on Monday.

“The purpose is straightforward: Fulfil them for your personal good. Otherwise, the difficulty might be decided by the Russian army.”

Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, calling it a “special operation” to “denazify” and demilitarise Ukraine, which he said was a threat to Russia.

Kyiv and the West say Putin’s invasion was merely an imperialist land grab.

The US and its allies have imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia for its invasion and sent billions of dollars in assistance to the Ukrainian government.

Just last week, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was visiting Washington, the USA announced one other $1.85 billion in military assistance for Ukraine, including a transfer of the Patriot Air Defense System, angering Moscow.

“It is not any secret to anyone that the strategic goal of the USA and its NATO allies is to defeat Russia on the battlefield as a mechanism for significantly weakening and even destroying our country,” Lavrov further told TASS.

He reiterated that Russia and the USA cannot maintain normal connection, blaming the administration of the U.S. President Joe Biden.

While Moscow had planned a swift operation to take over its neighbour, the war is now in its eleventh month, marked by many embarrassing Russian battlefield setbacks.

In the most recent attack to show gaps in Russia’s air defences, a drone believed to be Ukrainian penetrated lots of of kilometres through Russian airspace on Monday, causing a deadly explosion on the most important base for its strategic bombers.

Fierce fighting

Russian forces have been engaged for months in fierce fighting within the east and south of Ukraine, to defend the lands Moscow proclaimed it annexed in September and which make up the broader Ukrainian industrial Donbas region.

Over the past 24 hours, Ukrainian forces have repelled Russian attacks within the areas of two settlements within the Luhansk region and 6 within the Donetsk region, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said on Tuesday.

In his nightly video message on Monday, Zelenskiy called the situation along the frontline in Donbas “difficult and painful”.

Oleh Zhdanov, a military analyst based in Kyiv, said heavy fighting was happening around elevated areas near Kreminna within the Luhansk region.

He also said that fighting has picked up along the Bakhmut and Avdiivka, a line of contact further south within the Donetsk region, after a temporary easing in previous days.

“The arc of fireplace in Donetsk region continues to burn,” Zhdanov said in a social media video post.

Zelenskiy said because of this of attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure nearly nine million people were without power. That figure amounts to a few quarter of Ukraine’s population.

Sergey Kovalenko, head of YASNO, which supplies electricity to Kyiv, said late on Monday that while the ability situation has been improving in the town, blackouts will proceed.

“While repairs are underway, emergency shutdowns will proceed,” Kovalenko said on his Facebook page.

Russian airspace

Moscow on Monday said it had shot down a drone believed to be Ukrainian, causing it to crash on the Engels air base, where three service members were killed. Ukraine didn’t comment, under its usual policy on incidents inside Russia.

A suspected drone struck the identical base on Dec. 5.

The bottom, the most important airfield for the bombers that Kyiv says Moscow has used to attack Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, is lots of of miles from the Ukrainian frontier. The identical planes are also designed to launch nuclear-capable missiles as a part of Russia’s long-term strategic deterrent.

The Russian defence ministry said in an announcement no planes were damaged, but Russian and Ukrainian social media accounts said several had been destroyed.

Reuters was not in a position to independently confirm the reports.

Putin hosted leaders of other former Soviet states in St Petersburg on Monday for a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States group, which Ukraine has long since quit.

The invasion of Ukraine has been a test of Russia’s longstanding authority amongst other ex-Soviet states.

In televised remarks, Putin made no direct reference to the war, while saying threats to the safety and stability of the Eurasian region were increasing.

“Unfortunately challenges and threats on this area, especially from the surface, are only growing every year,” he said. “We also must acknowledge unfortunately that disagreements also arise between member states of the commonwealth.”