Putin issued the chilling order during a rare appearance wearing military fatigues this week, telling troops they should permanently oust Ukrainians from their own territory
Vladimir Putin has issued a chilling order to the Russian Army, urging troops to “finally defeat the enemy”, threatening peace negotiations with Ukraine as they have barely begun.
The Russian despot was seen in military fatigues at a Kursk region command post this week in a rare military appearance suggesting his desire to continue hostilities – a matter of hours after Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine is ready to seek peace. Putin vowed to treat hundreds of Ukrainian troops captured in Kursk region as “terrorists”, potentially jailing them for decades, and not as prisoners of war who can be exchanged.
Footage shows troops being humiliated as they are ordered to parrot “Hail to Russia ” – illegal under the rules of war, with Putin making clear he wanted a demilitarised zone on Ukraine’s border. He made the demand while outlining his demands for the “near future”, which included ousting Ukrainian fighters from their own territory.
He said: “Our task in the near future, in the shortest possible time is to finally defeat the enemy, who has dug in on the territory of the Kursk region. And is still conducting military operations here, to completely liberate the territory of the Kursk region, to restore the situation along the state border line….”
He also demanded “a security zone along the state border….” The chilling remarks come as Putin’s ambassador to London, Andrey Kelin, insisted that the Kremlin will approach a ceasefire – which it has previously ruled out – “with a lot of caution”. But allies of the West are approaching with their own brand of caution, with Poland eager to host US nuclear missiles.
Warsaw – worried about the Kremlin’s continued threat – revealed today it has asked the US to base nuclear weapons on its territory. President Andrzej Duda made the request while insisting Ukraine’s infrastructure should follow its expansion east, after Russia installed its own “wonder weapon” in Belarus, a Kremlin client state.
He said: “The borders of Nato moved east in 1999, so 26 years later there should also be a shift of the Nato infrastructure east,” For me this is obvious.” He told the Financial Times he had spoken to Trump envoy Keith Kellogg about the demand, adding: “I think it’s not only that the time has come, but that it would be safer if those weapons were already here.”
This will infuriate Putin, but the Russian tyrant has based his own nuclear weapons in neighbouring client state Belarus, and threatened to install “wonder weapon” Oreshnik there this year in a threat to the West. “They didn’t ask anyone’s permission,” said Duda.