Putin claims war would have ended long ago if it hadn't been for Ukraine

Vladimir Putin has expressed his dissatisfaction over Ukraine's reluctance to engage in negotiations and condemned the Ukrainian side, saying that but for them, "it would all have been over long ago". The president of the aggressor state made the comments at a meeting with the heads of the municipalities of the constituent entities that make up the Russian Federation.

Source: broadcast of Putin’s speech; Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti 

Quote: "Having refused to negotiate, they did exactly that! But let me remind you, in Istanbul we agreed on everything – I'm saying this to you, the heads of the municipal authorities; all [our] citizens should know this, and you’re the ones who work directly with people. We agreed on everything. And the lead negotiator from Ukraine even put his signature to this. The signature is there, we have the document. They just told us that we need to give some sign that Russia genuinely intends to resolve these issues peacefully, that we need to withdraw troops from Kyiv, which we did. A day later, they threw all the arrangements in the bin."

Details: Putin also started to gripe about how former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson had abandoned agreements with Russia. "They are idiots, aren’t they? And he [Johnson – ed.] says it directly: ‘If we had agreed on it, this would have ended a year and a half ago’."

Putin went on to describe President Zelenskyy’s Peace Formula as "a continuation of the implementation of the decree of the President of Ukraine on a prohibition on negotiating with Russia". "That’s what it is. These are prohibitory demands within the negotiation process," he said.  

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