Russian President Vladimir Putin today called on the Ukrainian military to “take power” in Kiev and overthrow President Volodymyr Zelensky and his entourage, calling them a “gang of neo-Nazis and drug addicts,” shortly after a spokesman announced that Russia was willing to negotiate with Ukraine in Minsk and as Russian troops surrounded Kiev. where the situation is “threatening”, as warned by the mayor of the capital. ” Take power into your hands. It seems to me that it will be easier to negotiate between you and me,” Putin told the Ukrainian army in an intervention on Russian television, according to the AFP news agency, and claimed that he does not fight army units but nationalist formations that behave “like terrorists” using civilians “as human shields.” The Russian leader’s message came this afternoon after military reports from the two countries admitted that the second day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had begun with at least two loud explosions in the center of the capital, Kiev, with civilian buildings affected.
But while raising tension with his call to the Ukrainian military, Putin also let it be known that Russia is willing to negotiate with the Ukrainian authorities if the neighboring country “lays down its arms”,after an offer to dialogue made by Zelensky. “In response to Zelensky’s proposal, Vladimir Putin is ready to send to Minsk a Russian delegation at the level of representatives of the Defense and Foreign Ministries and the Presidential Administration to hold negotiations with the Ukrainian delegation,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, according to the Sputnik news agency. Despite that, U.S. diplomatic spokesman Ned Price called the Russian negotiating offer “unserious.” “We see Moscow suggesting that diplomacy be carried out at gunpoint, when Moscow’s bombs, mortar fire and artillery are aimed at civilians,” he said. The pause continues for a long time. Unfortunately, that pause is accompanied by the fact that in large cities … nationalist elements carry out the deployment of multiple rocket launchers in residential neighborhoods, including Kiev,” Peskov said.
So far the invasion already counts more than 100 dead and about 100,000 displaced Ukrainians, while sources of the defending Army claim that about 800 Russian soldiers were killed since the beginning of the invasion, in the early hours of yesterday. The Russian military forces today tightened their siege on Kiev, in whose neighborhoods there was already fighting and there was even a missile attack at dawn. While the authorities claimed to “do everything possible” to resist, they asked their inhabitants to take up arms and clamored for more international sanctions against Moscow.The Ukrainian president released a brief video today to show that he remains in Kiev “defending” his country against the advance of Russian troops, in what seems a response to some versions that spoke of his departure from the national territory.
