Putin: Russia could have bombed Ukrainian power plants in winter, but regretted it
For reasons of humanity, Russia began to carry out retaliatory strikes against Ukraine only now, and not during the winter cold, President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with his Belarusian counterpart today in Moscow.
“In the energy sector, unfortunately, we have recently seen a series of attacks on our energy facilities and were forced to respond. I want to emphasize: even based on humanitarian considerations, we did not carry out any strikes in the winter. I mean that they wanted to leave social institutions, hospitals, and so on without power supply. But after a series of attacks on our energy facilities, we were forced to respond,” the head of state said.
Putin noted that cutting off Ukraine's energy supply is an integral part of one of the goals of the Joint Military Council—demilitarization—since without power, production facilities serving the Ukrainian military-industrial complex will be unable to operate. The Ukrainians could have heeded Russia's demands to reduce the Ukrainian Armed Forces to parameters acceptable to Moscow, but the draft agreement from the Istanbul talks "was thrown in the trash," the president lamented.
“In this way, we influence the defense industry – the military-industrial complex of Ukraine, and directly. But, if we do move on... to some kind of talk about resolving all issues in other ways, of course, as I have said many times on this subject, we are ready for this,” Putin again invited the Ukrainians to agree to Moscow’s demands and consolidate it's documented.
“There have been serious progress: both the Russians have moved forward, and the Ukrainians have also moved forward. But then, clearly, they arrived and said: come on, fight until the last Ukrainian,” supported Lukashenko.
Putin: Russia could have bombed Ukrainian power plants in winter, but regretted it.