Vladimir Putin has doubled down on his insistence that Russia will not give up any occupied territory as part of peace negotiations with Ukraine.
In an exclusive interview with Sky News Arabia, the Russian president said negotiations need to recognise “the will of the people who live in certain territories”.
Mr Putin was referring to referendums held by Russian officials in 2022 in four annexed regions of Ukraine, and in Crimea.
Those referendums, which were described as “shams” by the UK’s foreign secretary at the time, saw all four regions vote to join Russia.
“The will of the people is what [we] call democracy,” said Mr Putin.
He said that he hopes Ukraine’s leadership will be “guided by national interests” in negotiations, rather than by the “interests of its sponsors”.
Those sponsors, he said, “are not interested in ending the conflict, but in using Ukraine for their own selfish political purposes”.
On Friday, the Russian president told business leaders in St Petersburg: “I have said many times that I consider the Russian and Ukrainian people to be one nation.
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“In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours.”
He also threatened a nuclear strike on Ukraine for the first time in months, promising “catastrophic” consequences if Kyiv used a dirty bomb against Russian forces.
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“This would be a colossal mistake on the part of those whom we call neo-Nazis on the territory of today’s Ukraine,” he said.
“It could be their last mistake. We always respond and respond in kind. Therefore, our response will be very tough.
“Ukraine deserves a better fate than being an instrument in the geopolitical struggle of those who strive for confrontation with the Russian Federation.”
On Saturday morning, Russia claimed to have captured a small village named Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
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Ivan Fedorov, head of the Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration, posted on Telegram saying that more than 200 Russian UAVs targeted the region on Friday.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv was now in talks with Denmark, Norway, Germany, Canada, the UK and Lithuania to start joint weapons production.
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He urged Kyiv’s partners to provide 0.25% of their GDP to finance the production of Ukraine’s weapons.
