The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, talks to heads of international news agencies, in Saint Petersburg, June 5, 2024. Photo courtesy of the Kremlin news agency Sputnik.

From the 80th anniversary of D-Day to the G7 and the conference on Ukraine in Switzerland, Russia has been excluded, or has excluded itself, from many events at a time of intense diplomatic activity. Russian President Vladimir Putin has reminded his Western “partners,” as he likes to call them, that he does not intend to let them dictate the international agenda alone.

On Wednesday, June 5, on the sidelines of the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum, the Russian president held a long press conference, which was attended by the world’s leading news agencies, above all those from the “Global South” countries, which Moscow wants to make alliances with. This includes China, Iran, Turkey, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, to name a few. There were also agencies present from the West, such as Agence France-Presse, Reuters and Italy’s ANSA.

Indeed, this exercise was primarily aimed at Western countries. To demonstrate the solidity of Russia’s positions once again, Putin began by emphasizing how well his army was holding up on Ukraine’s frontlines. “The Ukrainian army loses at least 50,000 people every month, either killed or wounded,” claimed Putin, who said that Ukraine’s recent mobilization operations could not change the situation. Russian losses, on the other hand, were allegedly “several times lower.”

Putin claimed the same difference in the number of prisoners: 1,348 Russian soldiers were said to be held captive in Ukraine, compared with 6,465 Ukrainians detained in Russia. This ratio of one to five differs from the “one to ten” ratio mentioned by Putin in January.

‘A legitimate target’

The Russian president commented on the major issues on the Western camp’s agenda, from sending instructors to Ukrainian territory, a measure advocated by Emmanuel Macron, to possible strikes on Russian territory by Western-made weapons. Referring to the instructors, Putin said: “They are already present on Ukrainian territory and, unfortunately for them, they are suffering losses. The US and European states prefer to keep silent.” Earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had said that French servicemen in Ukraine were “a legitimate target” for the Russian army.

In terms of Kyiv’s authorization to strike targets on Russian soil, which has been called for by a growing number of countries, the head of the Kremlin described it as “direct participation in the war against Russia,” and chose a deliberately threatening tone: “If they consider it possible to deliver such weapons [in this case, long-range missiles of the ATACMS, Storm Shadow or SCALP varieties] to the combat zone to launch strikes on our territory and create problems for us, why don’t we have the right to supply weapons of the same type to some regions of the world where they can be used to launch strikes on sensitive facilities of the countries that do it to Russia?” he said.

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