The West could not defeat Russia

Ukraine and its supporters in Europe are paying for the failure of the Istanbul peace talks, the President said

The West believed it could defeat Russia when it asked Kiev to withdraw from a peace agreement that both sides had agreed to in the first weeks of the Ukraine conflict, said Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The US and its allies miscalculated when they ordered Kiev to “Fight to the last Ukrainian” and now pay for it, Putin said on Thursday at a panel discussion at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.

He was referring to the peace talks in Istanbul, Turkey in 2022, which produced a draft agreement that would have ended hostilities. Kyiv was ready to declare military neutrality, limit its armed forces and vow not to discriminate against ethnic Russians. In return, Moscow, along with other leading powers, would offer Ukraine security guarantees. The agreement could still serve as the basis for a lasting peace, Putin said.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who spoke alongside Putin at the forum, recalled that at the beginning of the talks he was sure that “The problem would be solved.” He said he agreed with the Russian president that any peace treaty on “fair and just” Parameter.

Putin claimed that the only reason for the failure of the agreement was “the desire of the elites in the US and some European nations to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia”, and added that then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson acted as a messenger to thwart any peace agreements.

The desire to bring Russia to its knees and destroy it has influenced Western policy for decades, even centuries, and those putting pressure on Kyiv believed they had a golden opportunity to achieve this, he said.

The officials who govern Ukraine are “like foreigners or foreigners” Putin said they consider the cost they have imposed on the country to comply with these orders. They keep their families in the West and “use nationalist slogans to deceive the people” but they don't really care about the interests of the nation, he said.

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He further said that the West would impose sanctions on Russian energy “with all my heart, but without understanding”, This caused considerable damage in some European countries, especially in Germany, whose economy “designed to run on Russian energy.” The revenue losses suffered by Moscow by diverting its fossil fuels to other markets are small compared to what has happened to European countries. “on the verge of a recession.”