President Vladimir Putin said Monday that the large number of men voluntarily enlisting in the Russian army was tipping the scales of the war in Ukraine in Moscow’s favor and expressed hope that his army would continue to make progress.
Mr. Putin, who said Russian forces had pushed back the Ukrainian army from nearly 200 locations this year and held the initiative across the entire front line, made the comments during a speech at the ministry of Defense, at a time when its army is progressing at the fastest pace since 2022, according to open source maps.
“I would like to emphasize from the outset that the past year marked a turning point in achieving the goals of the special military operation (in Ukraine),” Mr Putin told the generals.
“Russian troops have taken the strategic initiative across the entire contact line. This year alone, 189 population centers have been liberated,” he added.
He said about 430,000 Russians had signed military contracts this year, up from about 300,000 the year before, a factor he called extremely important to Russia’s war effort.
“This flow of volunteers is not about to stop. And thanks to this, we are witnessing a turning point on the front line,” Putin said.
Andrei Belousov, Mr. Putin’s defense minister, told the same audience that Russian troops had pushed back Ukrainian forces from nearly 4,500 square kilometers of territory this year and were advancing an average of 30 square kilometers a day. .
Mr. Belousov also said that Russian military planning must be ready to face any scenario, including the most extreme ones such as a potential conflict with NATO in Europe over the next decade.
In his speech, Mr Putin accused the West of pushing Russia to its “red lines” – situations he has publicly made clear he would not tolerate – and said Moscow had been forced to react.
“They (Western leaders) are only frightening their own population into believing that we are going to attack someone there under the pretext of the mythical Russian threat,” Mr. Putin said.
The tactic is very simple: they push us to a “red line”, from which we can no longer retreat, we start to respond and they immediately frighten their population – previously it was with the Soviet threat and today “Today it is with the Russian threat,” Mr. Putin said.
He added that Russia was following the development and potential deployment of short- and medium-range missiles by the United States with great concern and would lift its own voluntary restrictions on the deployment of such missiles if the United States decided to deploy such weapons.
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