Putin’s comments came just hours after he used his Victory Parade speech to justify the war.<\/p>\n
In that speech he said Russia was fighting a “just” war and called Ukraine an “aggressive force” that was being “armed and supported by the whole bloc of Nato”.<\/p>\n
Later, when asked at a news conference about the West helping Ukraine, Putin said: “They (West) promised assistance and then began fuelling a confrontation with Russia that continues to this day. I think that the matter is coming to an end, but it is a serious matter.”<\/p>\n
Putin also said he would only meet Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky once a lasting peace deal was agreed to. <\/p>\n
“A meeting in a third country is also possible, but only once final agreements have been reached on a peace treaty for a long\u2011term historical perspective, to take part in this event and sign (treaty), but it must be a final step,” he continued. <\/p>\n
Putin said he had heard that Zelensky was ready to hold a personal meeting but added “this is not the first time we have heard such statements”. <\/p>\n
Putin said he would be willing to negotiate new security arrangements for Europe, and that his preferred negotiating partner would be Germany’s former Chancellor Gerhard Schr\u00f6der.<\/p>\n
The ex-chancellor is a longstanding friend of Putin, and controversial because of his work for Russian state-owned energy firms.<\/p>\n
As part of the US-led ceasefire deal over the weekend, Kyiv and Moscow agreed to a swap of 1,000 prisoners from each country. But Putin said on Saturday that Russia had not yet heard from Ukraine about any exchanges. <\/p>\n
For the first time in nearly two decades there was no military hardware at the Red Square parade, which the Kremlin normally showcases to project Russian military power on the international stage.<\/p>\n
There were also far fewer journalists at the event, with many international media organisations not being granted access.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Putin’s comments came just hours after he used his Victory Parade speech to justify the war. In that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":949406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-949405","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\/116547532051954905","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949405","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=949405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/949406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}