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It’s Ukraine’s fault, the West is afraid and Russia wants to negotiate peace. These were the main ideas that Vladimir Putin wanted to convey during the closing press conference of the BRICS summit, a bloc originally formed by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and which has since expanded to include more countries. . The Russian president spoke to journalists in Kazan, Russia, before meeting with six heads of state present and with the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres.

“It was not Russia’s actions that intensified the conflict, it was the 2014 coup,” said the Russian president, quoted by the Russian state agency TASS. Putin accuses Washington of supporting the Euromaidan uprising in Ukraine ten years ago that ousted then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, removed kyiv from Moscow’s sphere of influence and led to the pro-Moscow uprising in the Donbass, in eastern Ukrainian territory, instigated by the Kremlin and started the war that ended the occupation and annexation of Crimea.

In the same statements, Putin states that, At this time, the Russian army “acts firmly in all directions” and advances “in all sectors of the line of contact.”

In Kursk, Ukrainian losses amount to 26 thousand people, according to Putin. and currently around 2,000 soldiers are surrounded in the region. Furthermore, the Russian head of state considers that Ukraine’s first and only offensive was its attempt to influence the North American elections, demonstrating that the multimillion-dollar US investments in military support were not in vain. Still about the United States, Putin was willing to cooperate with the country’s leaders, after the November 5 elections, only if it was a reciprocal feeling. “If you don’t want to, don’t do it.”

Vladimir Putin also mentioned Donald Trump’s statements earlier this week in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, where the former US president and current candidate for the White House revealed that he had “threatened” Putin, in an attempt to prevent the offensive Russian in Ukraine. . “I’m going to attack very hard, right in the middle of Moscow,” Trump told Putin, predicting a Russian attack scenario. The President of Russia, however, when asked about these statements, says that “you don’t remember” of such conversation.

What about North Korean soldiers? “Photographs are serious things; If they exist, it means they reflect something.” These were Vladimir Putin’s cryptic and unclear statements about the images captured by South Korea, which revealed the presence of North Korean soldiers on Russian soil. Furthermore, Putin stated that he never doubted Pyongyang’s intentions to implement the military cooperation agreement in terms of joint defense, ending up not confirming the accusations raised by kyiv, Washington and Seoul.

[Já saiu o quarto episódio de “A Grande Provocadora”, o novo podcast Plus do Observador que conta a história de Vera Lagoa, a mulher que afrontou Salazar, desafiou os militares de Abril e ridicularizou os que se achavam donos do país. Pode ouvir aqui, no Observador, e também na Apple Podcasts, no Spotify e no Youtube. E pode ouvir aqui o primeiro episódio, aqui o segundo e aqui o terceiro.]

The Russian president also accused Western forces of “unfairly” expanding NATO into the vicinity of Russia and reinforced that he would be able to change the situation, the TASS agency quotes. “We said: don’t do it, it violates our security,” Putin said, adding that in the face of “injustice” they want to “change the scenario and they will succeed.” The Russian head of state indicates “being prepared for this escalation”stating that, in fact, the West “is afraid” of the way the conflict could affect the international situation.

“The behavior of Ukraine’s leaders is very irrational”

Vladimir Putin once again stressed that a peace agreement with Ukraine must be based on the reality of the battlefield, where Moscow’s army controls almost 20% of Ukrainian territory.

“We are willing to consider any peace talks based on local realities. “We are not willing to do anything else,” he declared, and then issued the challenge:

“The ball is in your court,” Putin said, after hearing, during the summit, calls from representatives of China, India and Brazil for an immediate easing of violence in Ukraine and the quick start of peace talks. The Kremlin leader says he is open to negotiations, but insisted that kyiv refuses to engage in dialogue with Moscow.

“Everyone is focused on ending the conflict as quickly as possible and preferably peacefully,” Putin stressed.

However, he also stated that “the behavior of Ukraine’s leaders is very irrational,” after revealing that Turkish mediators, ahead of the peace negotiations in Istanbul in 2022, proposed several agreements, but that they were brought forward the next day. Zelensky refused. Putin emphasizes that he is willing to consider any option for peace agreements with Ukraine, since it is “better to sit at the negotiating tables than to proclaim Ukraine’s losses on the battlefield,” but that the kyiv regime is not interested, because We have to “lift martial law and call elections.”

On Wednesday, kyiv welcomed the lack of references in the final declaration of the BRICS summit to the “Russian neo-imperialist vision of changing the world order and global security architecture through its aggression against Ukraine.”

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine stressed, in a statement, that the paragraph dedicated to Ukraine in the summit declaration only refers to the national positions of the participating countries and “their commitment to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, as well as a peaceful agreement and with diplomacy” to end the war started by Russia in February 2022.

This Thursday, the Russian president thanked all his partners for paying attention to the Ukrainian conflict and “looking for a way to resolve it.”

The host of the 16th BRICS summit concluded the event on a positive note about the bloc’s influence on global security, reinforced by António Guterres, who spoke those same words a few hours earlier. Even so, on the 79th anniversary of the application of the United Nations Charter, after hearing harsh criticism of the organization in Kazan, Guterres left a call for peace in Ukraine and the Middle East, in accordance with the parameters defined by the UN .

Text edited by Dulce Neto