10 Wednesday April 13 2022 | the times
News
President Putin has warned that
western attempts to isolate Russia are
doomed to fail, and his Belarusian ally
accused Britain of staging the massacre
of unarmed civilians in the Ukrainian
town of Bucha.
“We don’t intend to be isolated,”
Putin said during a visit to the Vos-
tochny cosmodrome in Russia’s far east.
“It is impossible to severely isolate any-
one in the modern world — especially
such a vast country as Russia. The
[economic] blitzkrieg that our ill-wish-
ers counted on, of course, did not take
place.”
Putin, 69 described Russia’s military
operation in Ukraine as “absolutely
Putin shrugs off sanctions and
says Russia cannot be isolated
Tom Ball clear and noble” and praised the cour-
age of Russian soldiers. “Our main goal
is to help the people in Donbas,” he said,
referring to the coal-mining region in
eastern Ukraine where Moscow-
backed separatists have carved out two
breakaway republics. He again accused
Ukraine of committing “genocide”
against Russian speakers in Donbas.
The allegation has been rejected by the
International Court of Justice in the
Hague and António Guterres, secre-
tary-general of the United Nations.
President Lukashenko of Belarus,
who accompanied Putin to the space-
port, said Belarusian and Russian intel-
ligence services had exposed a “vile”
plot to frame Russia for the slaughter of
civilians in Bucha. “We discussed in
detail this special psychological opera-
tion, which was carried out by the Brit-
ish,” Lukashenko, 67, said after talks
with Putin. “If you need addresses,
passwords, car licence numbers, the
models of the cars in which they arrived
in Bucha and how they did it, the FSB of
Russia can provide these materials. If
not, then we can help in this regard.
Together with our Russian friends...
we completely revealed this nasty, vile
[plot] by the West.”
Putin also said Belarus had handed
over documents to Russia’s FSB spy
agency “proving” that dozens of images
of dead, unarmed, civilians as well as
multiple interviews with survivors,
were a “fake”, without giving details.
Russian forces captured Bucha, tothe northwest of Kyiv, on March 12.
Upon their withdrawal at the start of
this month, scores of civilians were
found dead in the streets, some with
their hands tied behind their backs, and
in their homes. Local officials said more
than 300 civilians had been massacred.
Putin insisted that he was forced to
act to prevent Ukraine from becoming
a springboard for a Nato attack on the
country he has led for 22 years. “It’s
clear that we didn’t have a choice,” he
said. “It was the right decision.” He also
accused western countries of encour-
aging nationalism and Nazism in Kyiv.
Putin also insisted that Russia’s
“special operation” was going to plan.
His government has confirmed the
deaths of more than 1,300 of its soldiersbut its true losses are said to be much
higher.
Ukrainian demands on security
guarantees meant that potential peace
talks had reached an impasse, he added.
“Inconsistency about essential matters
has been creating well-known difficul-
ties in achieving final agreements on
the negotiating track that would be
acceptable to us. Unless that happens,
the military operation will continue
until the objectives set at the beginning
of this operation are achieved,” he said.
Although Belarus is Russia’s closest
ally, Lukashenko has refused to send
troops to support the war. He admitted
last week, however, that he had
deployed special forces to Ukraine to
rescue Belarusian lorry drivers that hePresident Putin gives his speech at the Vostochny cosmodrome, where he spoke alongside President Lukashenko of Belarus, above, in Russia’s far east. Putin said his country would land an unmanned spacecraft
News War in Ukraine