Putin held his annual Q&A today, where he made some interesting new statements which I’ll first go over.
One of the most notable, to me, was the reiteration of the stated objectives of the SMO. For a long time now Ukrainian sources claimed that Russia was slowly walking back or down-scaling the SMO’s goals as a face-saving measure in light of their putative ‘inability to advance.’
Putin refuted this narrative once and for all, by adamantly restating the goals......
Not only that, but he again strongly implied that Russia will retake Odessa, calling it a purely Russian city which was founded by Catherine the Great.
