Putin says peace talks are at ‘a dead end’ and calls atrocities in Bucha ‘fake.’
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said on Tuesday that peace talks with Ukraine had reached a “dead end” and called the evidence of Russian atrocities in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha “fake,” using his first extended remarks about the war in nearly a month to insist that Russia would persist with its invasion.
Speaking at a news conference at a spaceport in Russia’s the Far East, Mr. Putin said that Ukraine had changed its position after the round of peace talks held in Istanbul on March 29 to one that was no longer acceptable to the Kremlin. While there were indications that Ukraine had this week again adopted a more constructive stance, he said, Russia’s “military operation will continue until its full completion” and its goals are met.
Those goals, he said, centered on the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, where Ukrainian and Western officials expect that Russia will soon mount an intense offensive.
While Russia’s initial offensive is widely seen as a failure because its forces failed to take Kyiv and had to retreat, Mr. Putin insisted on Tuesday — as he did in the first weeks of the war — that what he calls the “special military operation” was going “according to plan.”
“We will act rhythmically and calmly, according to the plan that was initially proposed by the general staff,” Mr. Putin said. “Our goal is to help the people who live in the Donbas, who feel their unbreakable bond with Russia.”
He said repeatedly that Russia had no choice but to invade Ukraine because a clash with Western-trained “neo-Nazis” in that country was inevitable.
“What is happening in Ukraine is a tragedy,” Mr. Putin said in a news conference after a meeting at the spaceport with President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus, his closest international ally. “They just didn’t leave us a choice. There was no choice.”
Tuesday’s news conference appeared to be geared in great part to reinforcing Mr. Putin’s support at home. Ever since he appeared before tens of thousands at a Moscow stadium on March 18, Mr. Putin’s public appearances have been limited to brief clips showing him meeting with government officials, mostly by video link, in which he did not comment on the peace talks or the war. Instead, he let his Defense Ministry and other officials do the talking.
Mr. Putin emerged from his cocoon on Monday for an off-camera meeting at his residence outside Moscow with Chancellor Karl Nehammer of Austria, a session that left Mr. Nehammer convinced that Mr. Putin was planning a “violent” assault on the Donbas.
On Tuesday, Mr. Putin arrived in the Amur Region of Russia’s Far East and was shown in a video released by the Kremlin chatting informally with workers at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, a sprawling new spaceport that has been plagued by construction delays and remains unfinished.
Mr. Putin told the workers that Russia would continue reinvigorating its space program, including plans to launch an unmanned mission to the moon scheduled for this year. The video appeared to be an effort to signal to television viewers that Russia’s economy could remain vibrant despite Western sanctions.
During the news conference, Mr. Putin said the Russian economy had withstood the initial shock of sanctions imposed over the invasion of Ukraine. He listed the ruble’s comeback, as well as the central bank’s decision to lower its key interest rate, as examples, saying that the world was too dependent on Russian food and energy exports to afford its complete isolation.
It was Western countries, he insisted, that would soon feel the political backlash from the economic pain wrought by the sanctions, as evidenced by rising prices for food and fuel. European countries, in particular, had shown yet again that they were acting as “poodles” of the United States, he said.
“They always miscalculate, not understanding that in difficult conditions, the Russian people always unite,” Mr. Putin said.
Asked about the atrocities in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, Mr. Putin responded by talking about the bombing of the Syrian city of Raqqa by the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State, reprising his well-worn argument about “double standards” that he says has given the United States a pass on its own immoral actions.
“Dead bodies were really lying in the ruins for months and decomposing, and no one cared,” Mr. Putin said. “No one even noticed.”
As for Bucha, Mr. Putin said that the alleged atrocities were “fake,” though he did not offer evidence of his claim, nor did he give details on how what he called the “provocation” had been orchestrated. Earlier in the news conference, Mr. Lukashenko offered his own version, claiming, without providing evidence, that British operatives had organized the killings.
“We discussed in detail this psychological special operation that the English carried out,” Mr. Lukashenko said, referring to Bucha.
Western powers look into an unverified claim of the possible use of a chemical agent in Mariupol.
The United States, Britain, and other Western allies, along with Ukraine’s government, are examining claims that Russia deployed a chemical agent that sickened a handful of people in Moscow’s unrelenting bid to gain complete control over the ruined Ukrainian city of Mariupol.
Pytor Andryushchenko, an adviser to the city government, said local officials believed that some chemical had been dropped by a drone on the city’s sprawling Azovstal steel plant, one of the last redoubts of the Ukrainian forces defending the city. They said it was unclear whether it was intended to be lethal.
He said that it might be something like tear gas, but that they could not be certain.
“It is the absolutely correct information that yesterday from a drone, something was dropped in that area and some chemical things were in it,” he said. “But we don’t know for sure if it was poison or something else.”
Ukrainian military commanders in the city said that Russian forces had used a drone on Monday to deploy “a poisonous substance of unknown origin” that caused respiratory difficulties and neurological symptoms that can be associated with chemical agents in a handful of soldiers and civilians.
The reports, though unverified, are being treated seriously given the longstanding warnings by Western intelligence agencies that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia might use unconventional weapons to subdue Ukrainian opposition. Having failed to seize Kyiv and quickly topple the Ukrainian government, Russia has turned its focus to Ukraine’s east and south, and defeating the remaining forces in Mariupol is essential in Russia’s effort to gain wider control over the region.
The United States, Britain, and Australia said that they were monitoring the situation closely and that there would be consequences if chemical agents were indeed used.
“These reports, if true, are deeply concerning and reflective of concerns that we have had about Russia’s potential to use a variety of riot control agents, including tear gas mixed with chemical agents, in Ukraine,” the Pentagon spokesman, John Kirby, said on Monday.
On Tuesday morning, the Azov Battalion — a group that was founded as a far-right volunteer unit and is one of the main Ukrainian forces holding out in Mariupol — issued a statement and released a video on its official Telegram channel that purported to offer more details.
The group said that at least three soldiers and civilians had been affected and that they were in “relatively satisfactory condition.” It said that the substance had been deployed close to Ukrainian military positions but “some distance” from civilian locations and that it was “impossible to investigate the scene of the crime due to enemy fire.”
Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Malyar, told a national television channel that the government was working to verify the information coming from Mariupol.
The British military had said earlier on Monday that Russia had previously used phosphorus munitions as weapons in eastern Ukraine and raised the possibility that they could be used in Mariupol. Phosphorus weapons are not considered chemical weapons, and their limited use — while controversial — is not forbidden under international law.
Russia, like Ukraine and most other nations, has ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, a treaty that bans their use. Moscow was also instrumental in pressuring Syria’s government to join the treaty in 2013 after it was accused of using a poisonous nerve agent on civilians in that country’s civil war.
But the Kremlin has sought to shield its Syrian ally from numerous accusations of chemical weapons use, calling such claims unsubstantiated or fictitious. Moscow has also been accused of using chemical agents to poison opponents including Alexei A. Navalny, the political figure. Russia denies these allegations.
On Monday, Eduard Basurin, a spokesman for the Kremlin-backed separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, described the Mariupol steel factory as a “city within a city” and said that Russian forces should “turn to the chemical troops, who will find a way to smoke the moles out of their holes.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Basurin said he had been referring to flamethrowers, not chemical weapons.
ATHENS — Greece will accelerate its plans to explore natural gas as part of efforts to cut its reliance on Russian supplies, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Tuesday.
Like many European countries, Greece depends on Russia for a significant share of its energy supply. Natural gas makes up about 40 percent of Greece’s electricity supply, and around 40 percent of that comes from Russia.
Mr. Mitsotakis said Greek authorities are “cautiously optimistic” about the existence of natural gas deposits in six areas off the country’s western coast, off the island of Crete, and in northern Greece. He added that they aim to have clarity on the reserves next year.
“In this new energy environment, we have no choice but to reduce our dependence on Russian natural gas and seek alternative solutions for transitional mineral fuels like natural gas which will guarantee both energy security as well as stable and better energy prices,” Mr. Mitsotakis said after talks with officials from Greece’s hydrocarbons commission and energy industry executives.
Other European Union countries are seeking energy alternatives as Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to undermine the bloc’s gas supply. This month, Lithuania became the first E.U. nation to halt natural gas imports from Russia in opposition to the war.
