Putin of Russia declares Easter ceasefire in Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared a one-sided Easter ceasefire in Ukraine.
President Vladimir Putin said Russia had enough strength and resources to lead the war in Ukraine to a logical conclusion, but he hoped that it would not have to use nuclear weapons.
Putin ordered thousands of Russian troops to Ukraine in February 2022, causing Europe’s largest ground conflict since World War II, and the greatest conflict between Moscow and the West from the depths of the Cold War.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have been killed or injured, and President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants to end the “Bloodbath” that his administration threw as a proxy war between the US and Russia.
In a state television film about Putin’s quarter as Russia’s Paramount leader, entitled “Russia, Kremlin, Putin, 25 years,” Putin was asked by a reporter about the risks of nuclear escalation from the Ukrainian War.
“They wanted to provoke us, so we wanted to make a mistake,” Putin said next to a portrait of 19th-century conservative emperor Alexander III, who suppressed opposition. “I didn’t need to use these weapons…and I hope they don’t need them.”
“We have enough strength and means to bring about a logical conclusion to what began in 2022 with the outcomes that Russia needs.”
Trump has been signaling for weeks that Moscow and Kiev were unhappy with the failure to reach conditions to end the war, but the Kremlin says the conflict is extremely complicated and it is difficult for Washington to make rapid progress.
Former President Joe Biden, Western European leader, Ukraine has repeatedly vowed to defeat the Russian army, which controls about a fifth of Ukraine.
Putin portrays war as a turning point moment in his relationship with Moscow with the West. He says he humiliated Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 by expanding NATO and infringing on its consideration of Moscow’s influence.
Trump warns that the conflict could turn into World War III. Former CIA director William Burns said in late 2022 there was a real risk that Russia could use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, an allegation dismissed by Moscow.
Putin of power
Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who was handed over the presidency by ailing Boris Yeltsin on the last day of 1999, is the longest serving as a leader of the Kremlin since Joseph Stalin, who ruled for 29 years until his death in 1953.
Russian dissidents – mostly in prisons or abroad, Putin sees Russia as a dictator who has built a vulnerable system of personal rules relying on psychofancy and corruption that is leading to decline and chaos.
Supporters cast Putin, who says Russian pollers have a recognition rating of over 85%, pushed back to the arrogant west and ended the chaos that came with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
In a carefully choreographed state television film that gave viewers a rare look behind the Russian president’s infamous closed life, Putin was shown to be offering chocolate and fermented Russian milk drinks to top Kremlin correspondent Pavel Zarbin in his private Kremlin kitchen.
Putin said he was the first to kneel to pray amid the 2002 Moscow Theatre crisis, when Chechnya extremists took 900 people hostages. More than 130 hostages were killed.
“I don’t feel like a certain kind of politician,” Putin said of his 25 years of power as president and prime minister.
“I continue to breathe the exact same air as millions of Russian citizens. That’s very important. God wants it to continue as long as possible and not go away.”
(Reporting by Reuters, edited by Guy Fowlconbridge and Felix Wright and Mark Heinrich)
