Russian President Vladimir Putin said he does not rule out the possibility of Russian forces capturing the Ukrainian city of Sumy. His remarks came during a speech at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).
“We have no specific objective to take Sumy, but I do not rule it out,” Putin stated.
He accused Kyiv of provoking the situation by launching attacks on Russia’s Kursk region. “They [Ukrainian forces] crossed into our Kursk region and lost 76,000 men there. That’s a catastrophe for them. In the end, we pushed them out. But they began posing a threat along the entire line of contact. What did that lead to? They already lack manpower, and now we are forced to create a security zone,” he said.
According to Putin, the current “buffer zone” in the Sumy region stretches 10 to 12 kilometers.
He added that the Russian army follows an old rule: “Where the Russian soldier sets foot, that land is ours.”
Putin also called on Ukraine to return to the principles of its 1990 declaration of sovereignty by adopting a neutral and non-aligned status.
“We have never questioned the right of the Ukrainian people to independence and sovereignty. However, the foundations on which Ukraine became independent were laid out in the 1991 Declaration of Independence, which clearly states that Ukraine is a non-aligned, non-nuclear, neutral state. It would be good to return to those core values on which Ukraine gained its independence and sovereignty,” the Russian president said.
