WE ALL DO
Reuters
Sun, May 4, 2025
President Vladimir Putin said in remarks published on Sunday that Russia had sufficient strength and resources to take the war in Ukraine to its logical conclusion, though he hoped that there would be no need to use nuclear weapons.
Putin ordered thousands of Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022, triggering Europe’s biggest ground conflict since World War II and the largest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the depths of the Cold War.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have been killed or injured and US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants to end the “bloodbath” that his administration casts as a proxy war between the United States and Russia.
In a film by state television about Putin’s quarter of a century as Russia’s paramount leader titled “Russia, Kremlin, Putin, 25 years,” Putin was asked by a reporter about the risk of nuclear escalation from the Ukraine war.
“They wanted to provoke us so that we made mistakes,” Putin said, speaking beside a portrait of Tsar Alexander III, a 19th century conservative who suppressed dissent. “There has been no need to use those weapons … and I hope they will not be required.”
“We have enough strength and means to bring what was started in 2022 to a logical conclusion with the outcome Russia requires.”
Trump has been signaling for weeks that he is frustrated by the failure of Moscow and Kyiv to reach terms to end the war, though the Kremlin has said that the conflict is so complicated that the rapid progress Washington wants is difficult.
Former US President Joe Biden, Western European leaders and Ukraine cast the invasion as an imperial-style land grab and repeatedly vowed to defeat Russian forces, which control about a fifth of Ukraine.
Putin portrays the war as a watershed moment in Moscow’s relations with the West, which he says humiliated Russia after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 by enlarging NATO and encroaching on what he considers Moscow’s sphere of influence.
Trump has warned that the conflict could develop into World War III. Former CIA Director William Burns has said there was a real risk in late 2022 that Russia could use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, an assertion dismissed by Moscow.
Putin in power
Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who was handed the presidency on the last day of 1999 by an ailing Boris Yeltsin, is the longest serving Kremlin leader since Josef Stalin, who ruled for 29 years until his death in 1953.
Russian dissidents – most now either in jail or abroad – see Putin as a dictator who has built a brittle system of personal rule reliant on sycophancy and corruption that is leading Russia towards decline and turmoil.
Supporters cast Putin, who Russian pollsters say has approval ratings of above 85%, as a savior who pushed back against an arrogant West and put an end to the chaos which accompanied the 1991 disintegration of the Soviet Union.
In the carefully choreographed state television film, which gave viewers a rare look behind the notoriously closed life of the Russian president, Putin was shown offering chocolates and a fermented Russian milk drink to Pavel Zarubin, a top Kremlin correspondent, in his private Kremlin kitchen.
Putin said that he first knelt in prayer during the 2002 Nord-Ost Moscow theater crisis, when Chechen militants took over 900 people hostage. More than 130 hostages were killed.
“I don’t feel like some kind of politician,” Putin said of his 25 years in power as president and prime minister.
“I continue to breathe the very same air as millions of Russian citizens. It is very important. God willing that it continues as long as possible. And that it doesn’t disappear.”
Putin says West tried to provoke him into using nuclear weapons
DPA
Mon, May 5, 2025
Russia's President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during a meeting of the Council of Legislators in Saint Petersburg. MIKHAIL METZEL/Kremlin/dpa
Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the West of trying to provoke him into using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, in comments in a Russian state television documentary film about his 25 years in power.
"They wanted to provoke us, they wanted to make us make mistakes," he said in the film "Russia. Kremlin. Putin. 25 years." However, there was no need to use nuclear weapons, he said. "And I hope that this will not be necessary in the future either."
Russia has sufficient forces and means to achieve everything that was necessary for Moscow in the military operation that began in 2022, he said of the year the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Putin and his leadership have repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine and its allies in the course of the war.
The US government was under the impression that Moscow could be preparing to drop a nuclear bomb in the autumn of 2022, according to reports. Washington delivered a stern warning to Russia through diplomatic channels at the time.
The test attack with a new Russian medium-range missile on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro in November 2024 is also considered a nuclear threat.
Officials say drones shot down near Moscow, airport briefly closed
Russian authorities reported a drone attack in the Moscow region early on Monday, with four unmanned aerial vehicles shot down over the city of Podolsk, south of the capital.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram that the drones were destroyed by Russian air defences. There was no damage or injuries at the crash site, he said, citing initial information.
Kiev: Over 200 clashes with Russian forces in eastern Ukraine
Russia continues to press its offensive in eastern Ukraine with high intensity, Ukraine's General Staff said in a Facebook post on Sunday, reporting over 200 clashes in a single day.
Fighting has intensified particularly around the strategic city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region, where Ukrainian forces said they repelled 70 attacks over the course of Sunday, with 12 more ongoing. The city serves as a key transport hub and Russian forces are reportedly approaching from the east, south and south-west.
The information could initially not be independently verified.
Attempts by Russia to break through to the west into the neighbouring industrial area of Dnipropetrovsk have so far been repelled by Ukraine.
The attacks come despite ongoing diplomatic efforts by the United States to broker a ceasefire between Moscow and Kiev. US President Donald Trump recently proposed an unconditional 30-day truce, a plan Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accepted. However, Putin rejected the offer.
Instead, Putin has declared a unilateral 72-hour ceasefire to coincide with the annual Victory Parade on Moscow's Red Square to mark the end of World War II, which is celebrated in Russia on May 9, which falls on Friday.
The ceasefire is scheduled to start at midnight Wednesday-Thursday in Moscow and end at midnight Saturday-Sunday (2100 GMT Wednesday-2100 GMT Saturday).
Kiev has rejected the limited pause and demanded that the ceasefire be extended to 30 days. "The Russians are asking for a ceasefire on May 9 and are themselves firing at Ukraine every day. This is cynicism of the highest order," Zelensky wrote on Telegram on Sunday.
Ukrainian ambassador to US on Putin’s nuclear weapons comments: ‘He is a threat’
Lauren Irwin
Sun, May 4, 2025
THE HILL
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Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., weighed in on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s remarks about nuclear weapons, saying “he is a threat” that should be taken at his word.
Markarova joined CBS News’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, where host Margaret Brennan asked what she made of Putin’s recent comment about how he hopes nuclear weapons “will not be required” to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
“At this point, it doesn’t matter how we interpret what he says. We just have to believe what he says and understand what he says,” Markarova said. “He is a threat, not only to Ukraine, but also to anyone who believes that nations should live peacefully.”
In a recent interview with Russian state media, shared with The Associated Press, Putin said a reconciliation between Russia and Ukraine was “inevitable.”
When asked about Ukrainian strikes in Russian territory, he said so far in the war, there has been no need for Russia to use nuclear weapons and he hopes “they will not be required” in the future.
Markarova said it is “very difficult to interpret” Putin, who has launched attacks on other nations and his own, but she highlighted the partnerships that Ukraine has sought with allied countries, including the U.S., with the hope that they can come together and “bring peace not only to our part of the world, but globally.”
“Putin is doing it together with Iran and North Korea. They are not hiding it. They are supporting other terroristic regimes, and we should also stay together in order to bring peace,” she said.
The comments come just days after the U.S. and Ukraine secured a long-awaited minerals deal, marking a step closer to ending the war, which has proved to be a more difficult task than the Trump administration anticipated.
While the deal is a step in the right direction, officials warn a ceasefire is still a ways off, particularly as fighting continues in the region.
Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., weighed in on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s remarks about nuclear weapons, saying “he is a threat” that should be taken at his word.
Markarova joined CBS News’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, where host Margaret Brennan asked what she made of Putin’s recent comment about how he hopes nuclear weapons “will not be required” to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
“At this point, it doesn’t matter how we interpret what he says. We just have to believe what he says and understand what he says,” Markarova said. “He is a threat, not only to Ukraine, but also to anyone who believes that nations should live peacefully.”
In a recent interview with Russian state media, shared with The Associated Press, Putin said a reconciliation between Russia and Ukraine was “inevitable.”
When asked about Ukrainian strikes in Russian territory, he said so far in the war, there has been no need for Russia to use nuclear weapons and he hopes “they will not be required” in the future.
Markarova said it is “very difficult to interpret” Putin, who has launched attacks on other nations and his own, but she highlighted the partnerships that Ukraine has sought with allied countries, including the U.S., with the hope that they can come together and “bring peace not only to our part of the world, but globally.”
“Putin is doing it together with Iran and North Korea. They are not hiding it. They are supporting other terroristic regimes, and we should also stay together in order to bring peace,” she said.
The comments come just days after the U.S. and Ukraine secured a long-awaited minerals deal, marking a step closer to ending the war, which has proved to be a more difficult task than the Trump administration anticipated.
While the deal is a step in the right direction, officials warn a ceasefire is still a ways off, particularly as fighting continues in the region.
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