Russia warned Ukraine on Monday to accept its proposals, which include giving up territories under Russian control, not doing so would call for actions from the latter’s army.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov communicated the country’s intentions the very next day after President Vladimir Putin’s agreed to talk.
Ukraine and its Western friends have rejected Putin’s proposal for talks as the latter’s army destroys Ukrainian cities and towns with missiles and rockets while it continues to order Ukraine to recognize its control of a fifth of the country.
Ukraine is adamant about fighting and says that it will keep pushing itself until Russia steps back.
“Our proposals for the demilitarization and denazification of the territories controlled by the regime, the elimination of threats to Russia’s security emanating from there, including our new lands, are well known to the enemy,” Lavrov was quoted as saying by state news agency TASS.
“The point is simple: Fulfil them for your own good. Otherwise, the issue will be decided by the Russian army,” he added.
Putin started Ukraine’s invasion on February 24 this year and termed it a “special operation” to “denazify” and “demilitarise” Ukraine, while calling it a danger to Russia. Ukraine and the Western countries say Putin’s invasion was merely an imperialist land grab.
Russia had planned the move very smoothly to annex territories of its southwestern neighbor. The war, currently in its 11th month, has witnessed many setbacks for Russia and Ukraine’s strong defense of major of its territories.
On Monday, a drone suspected a Ukrainian ripped through the skies in Russian airspace exposing holes in its air defenses and causing a major explosion at its prime base.
Russia claimed it had hit the drone, after which it crashed at the Engels air base, killing three service members. No comments came from the Ukrainian side.
Russia targets Ukrainian units
In order to protect the regions Moscow claimed it had annexed in September and which make up the larger industrial Donbas region of Ukraine, Russian forces have been involved in heavy battles in the east and south of that country for months.
The head of Ukraine’s military command claimed on Monday that Russian forces attacked 19 areas in the region the previous day. According to Russia’s defense ministry, it has improved its stance in the area wherein its missile troops and artillery targetted 63 Ukrainian units a day earlier.
While giving his message through video at night time, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy felt the circumstance on the front in Donbas “difficult and painful”.
“Bakhmut, Kreminna, and other areas in Donbas … require a maximum of strength and concentration,” Zelenskyy said.
“The occupiers are deploying all resources available to them – and these are considerable resources – to make some sort of advance,” he added.
Oleh Zhdanov, a Ukrainian military analyst, said intense fighting was carried out around elevated areas near Kreminna in the Luhansk region.
Hundreds of kilometres away from the Ukrainian border, the base serves as the primary airport for the bombers that Kiev claims Moscow has deployed to attack Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. As a part of its long-term strategic deterrent, Russia has also built nuclear-capable missile launchers onto the same aircraft.
No planes were damaged, according to a statement from the Russian military ministry, but several were reportedly destroyed according to Russian and Ukrainian social media posts.
