'How Can I Negotiate With a Regime That Attacks Civilians?' - Putin Asks With No Hint of Irony

With no notice of irony, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) counter invasion objective was meant to strengthen Kyiv’s position in any future negotiations – talks he said would make no sense with a government that attacks civilians.

The Russian state news agency TASS reported Putin’s opening statement at a meeting of Russia’s Security Council on Monday, Aug. 12 to discuss the situation on the Russian border and the incursion into the Kursk region. He said that what he termed as Ukraine’s armed provocation was aimed to bolster Kyiv’s position for future talks. He then went on to say that talks with a government that attacks civilians make no sense – overlooking the strategy he has employed for the last two and a half years.

“It is now clear why the Kyiv regime refused our proposals to return to the plan for a peaceful settlement,” Putin said. “The enemy is doing the bidding of its Western masters – the West is waging war against us using Ukrainians… It seeks to improve its negotiating position in the future.”

He based this on comments made by Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff as quoted in Friday’s Washington Post. Without directly referring to the action in Kursk, Podolyak said that any military actions on the Russian territory could improve Ukraine’s position in future negotiations with Russia to end the war.

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Then Putin said “What kind of negotiations can we even talk about with people who indiscriminately strike civilians, civilian infrastructure or try to create threats to nuclear power facilities. What can we even talk about with them?"

He then interpreted Thursday’s article in the European edition of Politico as confirmation that the attack on Russia’s Kursk Region took place with the approval of the West as further evidence that Ukraine was the West’s puppet.

Meanwhile, another former advisor to Putin, Sergei Markov, now a political scientist at Moscow State University, was speaking to Times Radio attempting to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while attacking the “illegal” Kursk incursion.

While saying the Ukrainian advance “is humiliation for Vladimir Putin and the Russian people who are, of course, not happy.”

He then added: “There are thousands of refugees from the region and… the Russian army is not able to handle this problem.

“Even worse, this morning, we know that some of the districts in the Belgorod region, near the Ukrainian border, have also started an evacuation - it’s a real problem.”

Markov then went on: “It’s reasonable, that Russia does not respect the border of Ukraine… it’s absolutely understandable [to] most people.

“The difference is Russia is a normal, democratic country, which respects the rights of the people.” “It’s absolutely clear that.”

Claiming that Russians living in Ukraine were suffering under Ukraine’s neo-colonial regime, he said an obvious example was that, according to him, pro-Ukraine figures are given a platform to put forward Kyiv’s point of view on Russian TV but “not one program” allows Russians to put forward their perspective in Ukraine.

“It’s absolutely clear Russia is a much freer country than Ukraine,” he claimed.

The comments by Putin and Markov show that there is currently little chance of Moscow and Kyiv finding any common ground for peace, particularly if their views and evaluation of the causes and continuation of the war are shared by most of the Russian people.

Kyiv’s current military action is the hope that breaking through the Kremlin imposed information vacuum, as currently being experienced by the citizens of Kursk, will bring about a sea change in popular perception.