Missile strikes on Ukraine's power infrastructure inevitable: Putin
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Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin stated without hesitance on Friday that Moscow's strikes on Ukraine's infrastructure were "inevitable". Kremlin had dismissed US President Joe Biden's invite for talks and warned that the assault on Ukraine would continue, Agence France-Presse reported.
AFP writes that Russia had suffered huge defeats in recent months and allowed Ukraine to reclaim various regions there. After this, Russia turned to attack Ukraine's power sources in October, which ended many Ukraine cities in blackouts while winter started.
In an hour-long phone call, Putin told the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that Russian strikes on Ukraine's power grid were responses to provocation from Kyiv. He slammed the West, calling the latter's policies "destructive".
Putin said that for a long, Russia had kept itself from targeted missile strikes on Ukraine territories. "But now such measures have become a forced and inevitable response to Kyiv's provocative attacks on Russia's civilian infrastructure," AFP quoted Kremlin.
Putin was referring to Kyiv blasting a bridge that connected Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, to the Russian mainland.
Scholz meanwhile urged the Russian President to reach a diplomatic solution as soon as possible, subsequently withdrawing Russian forces from Ukraine. However, Putin asked Berlin to reconsider its stand on the Russia-Ukraine issue.
Putin further alleged that the West's destructive policies are what the leads Kyiv away from negotiations.
Ukraine President Volodymir Zelensky had closed out chances of any talks with Moscow as far as Putin remains President of Russia. This was after Russia claimed to have annexed more Ukrainian regions.