{"id":201666,"date":"2025-06-21T04:45:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-21T04:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/201666\/"},"modified":"2025-06-21T04:45:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-21T04:45:13","slug":"ukraine-war-briefing-putins-claim-that-ukraine-is-ours-is-evidence-of-his-disdain-for-peace-efforts-says-kyiv-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/201666\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine war briefing: Putin\u2019s claim that Ukraine is \u2018ours\u2019 is evidence of his disdain for peace efforts, says Kyiv | Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"
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    Vladimir Putin has said he believes the whole of Ukraine is \u201cours\u201d and warned that advancing Russian forces could take the northern Ukrainian city of Sumy<\/strong> as part of a bid to carve out a buffer zone along the border. Ukraine\u2019s foreign minister denounced the Russian president\u2019s statements on Friday as evidence of Russian \u201cdisdain\u201d for US peace efforts and said Moscow was bent on seizing more territory and killing more Ukrainians. Putin, when asked about fresh Russian advances, told the country\u2019s flagship economic forum in St Petersburg that he considered Russians and Ukrainians to be one people and \u201cin that sense the whole of Ukraine is ours\u201d. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly rejected the notion that Russians and Ukrainians are one people. The Ukrainian president said commanders had discussed Russian action in the Sumy region<\/a> and \u201cwe are holding them back and eliminating these killers\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

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    Vladimir Putin claimed he was not questioning Ukraine\u2019s independence or its people\u2019s striving for sovereignty<\/strong> but that when Ukraine declared independence as the Soviet Union fell in 1991 it also declared its neutrality. He said Moscow wanted Ukraine to accept the reality on the ground \u2013 where Russia now controls about a fifth of Ukraine \u2013 if there was to be a chance of peace. Andrii Sybiha, the Ukrainian foreign minister, said on X: \u201cPutin\u2019s cynical statements demonstrate complete disdain for US peace efforts. While the United States and the rest of the world have called for an immediate end to the killing, Russia\u2019s top war criminal discusses plans to seize more Ukrainian territory and kill more Ukrainians.\u201d Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address that Russia had shown \u201copenly and utterly cynically that they \u2018don\u2019t feel like\u2019 agreeing to a ceasefire. Russia wants to continue the war.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

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    Russia and Ukraine exchanged more captured soldiers on Friday<\/strong>, the latest in a series of prisoner swaps agreed at peace talks in Istanbul<\/a> earlier this month. \u201cA group of Russian servicemen was returned from the territory controlled by the Kyiv regime,\u201d Russia\u2019s defence ministry said. \u201cIn exchange, a group of Ukrainian prisoners of war was handed over.\u201d An Agence France-Presse reporter saw freed Ukrainian prisoners of war being greeted by tearful relatives after stepping off a bus. Zelenskyy said most of the Ukrainians freed in the swap had been in Russian captivity \u201cfor over two years\u201d. Moscow posted a video of Russian soldiers in military fatigues chanting \u201cRussia, Russia\u201d with Russian flags draped over them. Neither side said how many soldiers were freed in Friday\u2019s swap.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

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    Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine was working on the rapid development of interceptor drones<\/strong> to counter the swarms of Russian drones that have been descending on Ukrainian cities in increasing numbers in recent weeks. \u201cSeveral of our domestic enterprises \u2013 and, accordingly, different types of drones \u2013 are delivering results,\u201d he said. \u201cProduction volumes of interceptors are already increasing.\u201d Russian forces have been deploying more than 400 drones on a single night.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

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    Vladimir Putin said Russia must not be allowed to fall into recession<\/a> <\/strong>as some in his government warned of a hit to economic growth. \u201cSome specialists and experts are pointing to the risks of stagnation and even a recession,\u201d he said at the St Petersburg forum on Friday. \u201cThis must not be allowed to happen under any circumstances.\u201d Russia posted its slowest quarterly expansion in two years for the first quarter of 2025 and analysts have warned that heavy public investment in the defence industry is no longer enough to keep the country\u2019s economy growing.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vladimir Putin has said he believes the whole of Ukraine is \u201cours\u201d and warned that advancing Russian forces…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-201666","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114719537601555305","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}