Putin claims Russia's war in Ukraine is not a conflict over territory but about "principles"
From CNN’s Mariya Knight
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has laid bloody siege to Ukraine for nearly 20 months in an effort to conquer large swaths of Ukrainian land, on Thursday claimed the war is not a conflict over territory — but instead about "principles."
“The Ukraine crisis is not a territorial conflict, and I want to make that clear. Russia is the world’s largest country in terms of land area, and we have no interest in conquering additional territory,” Putin said at the Valdai Forum in Sochi.
Tens of thousands have been killed, entire towns and villages wiped out and billions of dollars of infrastructure destroyed since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine began on February 24 last year. Meanwhile, the Russian president has attempted to annex four Ukrainian regions in violation of international law to add to the Crimean peninsula occupied by Moscow's forces since 2014.
But on Thursday, Putin claimed that Russia was not "attempting to establish regional geopolitical balance," in Ukraine. Instead, he said the issue was "about the principles underlying the new international order."
The denial of these principles, one of them being "a balance in the world where no one can unilaterally force or compel others to live or behave as a hegemon pleases," is what causes conflicts, Putin claimed, apparently referring to the West.
Western elites "need an enemy to justify the need for military action and expansion" and made Moscow into one, Putin claimed.
Some context: Putin is a staunch proponent of what he calls a "multipolar world order," promoting structures such as the BRICS group of emerging economies as a counterweight to US- and Western-led institutions that have harshly condemned Russia for its war on Ukraine.
He has previously attempted to justify his brutal war by claiming Ukraine's aspiration to join NATO was a dire threat to Russia, that his invasion was a mission to "de-Nazify" Ukraine, and has emphasized his view that Ukraine is part of Russia, culturally, linguistically and politically. He has even compared himself to the 18th century Russian czar, Peter the Great.
Ukraine has rejected these arguments and repeatedly said it will not cede any territory to Russia.
3 hr 12 min ago
"Horrifying" Russian strike shows need for continued Ukraine support, White House says
"Can you imagine just walking to the grocery store with your kids, trying to figure out what is it that you're going to make for dinner, and you see an explosion happen? Where bodies are everywhere? And it's horrifying," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a briefing. “This is why we're doing everything that we can to help Ukraine, to help the brave people of Ukraine to fight for their freedom."
The press secretary said that, during the recent US government funding fight, President Joe Biden had pushed for the US to “continue to support the people of Ukraine, because this is the horrifying nature that they live in every day.”
Jean-Pierre called on Congress to now act on additional funding, after the short-term spending bill passed last weekend left out any new funding for Kyiv's war effort.
The press secretary said the administration is working on another Ukraine aid package that includes new weapons and equipment. “We're going to continue to make sure that we meet the battlefield needs that Ukraine has," she told reporters.
More on the attack: Ukrainian officials say the devastating strike hit the grocery store and a cafe nearby Thursday afternoon. It marks one of the deadliest attacks against civilians to be reported since the conflict began. At least 51 people are dead, according to Ukrainian officials, who say the toll may still rise as workers clear the rubble.
11 min ago
Russia has successfully tested a new nuclear-powered strategic missile, Putin says
From CNN's Tim Lister, Sergey Gudkov and Mariya Knight
Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced that Russia has successfully carried out a test of a new generation of nuclear-powered cruise missile.
State news agency RIA Novosti quoted Putin as saying the “last successful test of the Burevestnik, a global-range cruise missile with a nuclear installation, a nuclear propulsion system, has been conducted.”
Putin was speaking at the Valdai Forum in Sochi.
The program to develop the Burevestnik was announced by Putin in March 2018 as part of a broader initiative to develop a new generation of intercontinental and hypersonic missiles. Among them were the Kinzhal ballistic missile and the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle. Addressing the West, he said in that speech: “Listen to us now.”
Putin told the Federal Assembly in March 2018 that the goal was to ensure a strategic balance in the world for decades to come, including the Burevestnik and Sarmat missiles.
“It is a low-flying stealth missile carrying a nuclear warhead, with almost unlimited range, unpredictable trajectory and ability to bypass interception boundaries,” Putin said then.
However, Western analysts say the program has since run into trouble, with a number of failed tests. In 2019, the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), an open source analytical group, said that “there is a consensus in the press, with purported agreement from U.S. intelligence services, that the Burevestnik has been tested 13 times, with two partial successes.”
The NTI quoted Russian military expert Alexei Leonkov as describing the Burevestnik as a weapon of retaliation, which Russia would use after Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles to finish military and civilian infrastructure and not leave a chance of survival.
Nuclear tests: Also in his speech at the Valdai Forum, Putin said that it is possible to revoke the ratification of a treaty banning nuclear tests.
“The United States signed the corresponding international act, document, treaty banning nuclear weapons tests, and Russia signed it. Russia signed and ratified, and the United States signed but did not ratify,” Putin said in Sochi.
The Russian president added that he sees it fit to “mirror the manner of the United States” and revoke Russia’s ratification.
“But this is a question for the State Duma deputies. In theory, this ratification could be revoked. If we do this, it will be quite enough,” Putin noted.
Underground nuclear testing was banned by the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The US and China signed the treaty, but they haven’t ratified it.
Zelensky calls for more air defenses following "inhuman terrorist attack" in Kupiansk
From CNN's Svitlana Vlasova and Radina Gigova
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated his call for more air defenses following a Russian strike in the village of Hroza in Kupiansk district, which left at least 51 people dead.
"I believe that today it is impossible to protect people, especially during the winter, except by air defense, to protect people who died absolutely tragically because of this inhuman terrorist attack," Zelensky told reporters during a visit to Granada, Spain, on Thursday. He also noted that Russian attacks the Kharkiv region on a daily basis and only air defenses can help.
During meetings with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Zelensky said he is focused on Ukraine's need for air defense and thinks a lot of progress has been made for the support needed.
He said Ukraine will receive six Hawk systems from Spain and that Germany will work to provide Kyiv with another Patriot system. Zelensky said he believes the Patriot system is "the only system that can withstand such threats and such massacres."
3 hr 12 min ago
Russian strike on fallen soldier's wake is one of deadliest attacks of the war, Ukraine says
From CNN's Tim Lister, Svitlana Vlasova and Sana Noor Haq, CNN
A Russian missile strike killed at least 51 people, including a child, in a village near the eastern Ukrainian city of Kupiansk on Thursday, officials say, in one of the deadliest attacks against civilians since the conflict began.
Moscow’s forces targeted a cafe and a shop in Hroza, in the Kharkiv region, soon after midday local time, according to Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko.
Scenes emerged of emergency workers wading through dense rubble in the aftermath of the attack. Doctors are treating the six people injured by the strike.
Bodies of the deceased, including a 6-year-old boy, were removed from the destroyed buildings, said Oleh Synehubov, a regional military official. The bodies of 29 victims have been identified, the Ukrainian interior minister said. The other bodies were sent to facilities in the city of Kharkiv.
There were locals inside the store when the missile ripped through, Ukraine’s interior minister said, triggering a scale of devastation not seen since an attack on a railway station in Kramatorsk in early 2022 killed more than 60 people.
A wake for a fallen Ukrainian soldier was being held at the village cafe when the missile struck, killing several members of the soldier’s family, Dmytro Chubenko, spokesperson for the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office, told Ukrainian media outlet RBC.
The fallen Ukrainian soldier had previously been buried in the city of Dnipro, but his relatives wanted him to be reburied in the village where he was originally from, Chubenko said.
“The wake was attended by the son of the deceased, who was also a soldier,” he said. “The son, along with his wife and mother, were in a cafe and were killed by a rocket,” he added.
According to the latest death toll, the attack wiped out about one fifth of the village, which was home to 330 people.
Hand grenade fragments found in Prigozhin plane wreck, Putin claims
From CNN's Mariya Knight and Tara John
Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested Thursday that it was not an “external” attack that crashed the plane carrying Wagner warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin in August, but hand grenades within the aircraft.
Speaking at the Valdai Forum in Sochi, Putin said the “chairman of the investigative committee just reported a few days ago that the fragments of hand grenades were found in the bodies of the victims. There was no external influence on the plane, it is an established fact.”
Prigozhin, who led a failed uprising against the Kremlin, was among the 10 people on board the private plane which crashed in a field northwest of Moscow in August en route to St. Petersburg. All on board, including Prigozhin and his top aides, were killed.
The Russian leader, whose government has denied involvement in the crash, did not detail how grenades might have exploded on the plane, but said that he thought investigators should have performed drug or alcohol tests on the bodies of the victims.
“I repeat, in my opinion such an examination should have been carried out but it wasn’t,” he said, also saying that “10 billion in cash and 5 kilos of cocaine” had previously been found by Russian security forces in Wagner’s office in St Petersburg.
Putin said the chairman of the investigation committee said it was ok to “share this information publicly” as it was “an established fact.”
The crash came two months to the day after Prigozhin’s attempted mutiny against Russia’s military leadership, which posed the biggest challenge to Putin’s rule in decades.
A Russian missile strike killed dozens in a village near the eastern Ukrainian city of Kupiansk on Thursday, officials say, in one of the deadliest attacks against civilians since the conflict began.
Russia has successfully carried out a test of a new generation of nuclear-powered cruise missile, President Vladimir Putin said. In a wide-ranging speech, Putin also raised the prospect of revoking Russia's ratification of a treaty banning nuclear tests.
US President Joe Biden is concerned failing efforts to approve arms for Ukraine amid political upheaval in Congress could become a serious battlefield concern.
A number of Russian naval ships have been relocated to other ports in the Black Sea following several devastating Ukrainian missile strikes on the Crimean port of Sevastopol, satellite images show.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has laid bloody siege to Ukraine for nearly 20 months in an effort to conquer large swaths of Ukrainian land, on Thursday claimed the war is not a conflict over territory — but instead about "principles."
“The Ukraine crisis is not a territorial conflict, and I want to make that clear. Russia is the world’s largest country in terms of land area, and we have no interest in conquering additional territory,” Putin said at the Valdai Forum in Sochi.
Tens of thousands have been killed, entire towns and villages wiped out and billions of dollars of infrastructure destroyed since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine began on February 24 last year. Meanwhile, the Russian president has attempted to annex four Ukrainian regions in violation of international law to add to the Crimean peninsula occupied by Moscow's forces since 2014.
But on Thursday, Putin claimed that Russia was not "attempting to establish regional geopolitical balance," in Ukraine. Instead, he said the issue was "about the principles underlying the new international order."
The denial of these principles, one of them being "a balance in the world where no one can unilaterally force or compel others to live or behave as a hegemon pleases," is what causes conflicts, Putin claimed, apparently referring to the West.
Western elites "need an enemy to justify the need for military action and expansion" and made Moscow into one, Putin claimed.
Some context: Putin is a staunch proponent of what he calls a "multipolar world order," promoting structures such as the BRICS group of emerging economies as a counterweight to US- and Western-led institutions that have harshly condemned Russia for its war on Ukraine.
He has previously attempted to justify his brutal war by claiming Ukraine's aspiration to join NATO was a dire threat to Russia, that his invasion was a mission to "de-Nazify" Ukraine, and has emphasized his view that Ukraine is part of Russia, culturally, linguistically and politically. He has even compared himself to the 18th century Russian czar, Peter the Great.
Ukraine has rejected these arguments and repeatedly said it will not cede any territory to Russia.
"Can you imagine just walking to the grocery store with your kids, trying to figure out what is it that you're going to make for dinner, and you see an explosion happen? Where bodies are everywhere? And it's horrifying," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a briefing. “This is why we're doing everything that we can to help Ukraine, to help the brave people of Ukraine to fight for their freedom."
The press secretary said that, during the recent US government funding fight, President Joe Biden had pushed for the US to “continue to support the people of Ukraine, because this is the horrifying nature that they live in every day.”
Jean-Pierre called on Congress to now act on additional funding, after the short-term spending bill passed last weekend left out any new funding for Kyiv's war effort.
The press secretary said the administration is working on another Ukraine aid package that includes new weapons and equipment. “We're going to continue to make sure that we meet the battlefield needs that Ukraine has," she told reporters.
More on the attack: Ukrainian officials say the devastating strike hit the grocery store and a cafe nearby Thursday afternoon. It marks one of the deadliest attacks against civilians to be reported since the conflict began. At least 51 people are dead, according to Ukrainian officials, who say the toll may still rise as workers clear the rubble.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced that Russia has successfully carried out a test of a new generation of nuclear-powered cruise missile.
State news agency RIA Novosti quoted Putin as saying the “last successful test of the Burevestnik, a global-range cruise missile with a nuclear installation, a nuclear propulsion system, has been conducted.”
Putin was speaking at the Valdai Forum in Sochi.
The program to develop the Burevestnik was announced by Putin in March 2018 as part of a broader initiative to develop a new generation of intercontinental and hypersonic missiles. Among them were the Kinzhal ballistic missile and the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle. Addressing the West, he said in that speech: “Listen to us now.”
Putin told the Federal Assembly in March 2018 that the goal was to ensure a strategic balance in the world for decades to come, including the Burevestnik and Sarmat missiles.
“It is a low-flying stealth missile carrying a nuclear warhead, with almost unlimited range, unpredictable trajectory and ability to bypass interception boundaries,” Putin said then.
However, Western analysts say the program has since run into trouble, with a number of failed tests. In 2019, the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), an open source analytical group, said that “there is a consensus in the press, with purported agreement from U.S. intelligence services, that the Burevestnik has been tested 13 times, with two partial successes.”
The NTI quoted Russian military expert Alexei Leonkov as describing the Burevestnik as a weapon of retaliation, which Russia would use after Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles to finish military and civilian infrastructure and not leave a chance of survival.
Nuclear tests: Also in his speech at the Valdai Forum, Putin said that it is possible to revoke the ratification of a treaty banning nuclear tests.
“The United States signed the corresponding international act, document, treaty banning nuclear weapons tests, and Russia signed it. Russia signed and ratified, and the United States signed but did not ratify,” Putin said in Sochi.
The Russian president added that he sees it fit to “mirror the manner of the United States” and revoke Russia’s ratification.
“But this is a question for the State Duma deputies. In theory, this ratification could be revoked. If we do this, it will be quite enough,” Putin noted.
Underground nuclear testing was banned by the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The US and China signed the treaty, but they haven’t ratified it.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated his call for more air defenses following a Russian strike in the village of Hroza in Kupiansk district, which left at least 51 people dead.
"I believe that today it is impossible to protect people, especially during the winter, except by air defense, to protect people who died absolutely tragically because of this inhuman terrorist attack," Zelensky told reporters during a visit to Granada, Spain, on Thursday. He also noted that Russian attacks the Kharkiv region on a daily basis and only air defenses can help.
During meetings with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Zelensky said he is focused on Ukraine's need for air defense and thinks a lot of progress has been made for the support needed.
He said Ukraine will receive six Hawk systems from Spain and that Germany will work to provide Kyiv with another Patriot system. Zelensky said he believes the Patriot system is "the only system that can withstand such threats and such massacres."
A Russian missile strike killed at least 51 people, including a child, in a village near the eastern Ukrainian city of Kupiansk on Thursday, officials say, in one of the deadliest attacks against civilians since the conflict began.
Moscow’s forces targeted a cafe and a shop in Hroza, in the Kharkiv region, soon after midday local time, according to Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko.
Scenes emerged of emergency workers wading through dense rubble in the aftermath of the attack. Doctors are treating the six people injured by the strike.
Bodies of the deceased, including a 6-year-old boy, were removed from the destroyed buildings, said Oleh Synehubov, a regional military official. The bodies of 29 victims have been identified, the Ukrainian interior minister said. The other bodies were sent to facilities in the city of Kharkiv.
There were locals inside the store when the missile ripped through, Ukraine’s interior minister said, triggering a scale of devastation not seen since an attack on a railway station in Kramatorsk in early 2022 killed more than 60 people.
A wake for a fallen Ukrainian soldier was being held at the village cafe when the missile struck, killing several members of the soldier’s family, Dmytro Chubenko, spokesperson for the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office, told Ukrainian media outlet RBC.
The fallen Ukrainian soldier had previously been buried in the city of Dnipro, but his relatives wanted him to be reburied in the village where he was originally from, Chubenko said.
“The wake was attended by the son of the deceased, who was also a soldier,” he said. “The son, along with his wife and mother, were in a cafe and were killed by a rocket,” he added.
According to the latest death toll, the attack wiped out about one fifth of the village, which was home to 330 people.
Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested Thursday that it was not an “external” attack that crashed the plane carrying Wagner warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin in August, but hand grenades within the aircraft.
Speaking at the Valdai Forum in Sochi, Putin said the “chairman of the investigative committee just reported a few days ago that the fragments of hand grenades were found in the bodies of the victims. There was no external influence on the plane, it is an established fact.”
Prigozhin, who led a failed uprising against the Kremlin, was among the 10 people on board the private plane which crashed in a field northwest of Moscow in August en route to St. Petersburg. All on board, including Prigozhin and his top aides, were killed.
The Russian leader, whose government has denied involvement in the crash, did not detail how grenades might have exploded on the plane, but said that he thought investigators should have performed drug or alcohol tests on the bodies of the victims.
“I repeat, in my opinion such an examination should have been carried out but it wasn’t,” he said, also saying that “10 billion in cash and 5 kilos of cocaine” had previously been found by Russian security forces in Wagner’s office in St Petersburg.
Putin said the chairman of the investigation committee said it was ok to “share this information publicly” as it was “an established fact.”
The crash came two months to the day after Prigozhin’s attempted mutiny against Russia’s military leadership, which posed the biggest challenge to Putin’s rule in decades.
