The Russian president has addressed a suggestion to broaden and extend the Easter ceasefire
Russia targets Ukrainian and foreign troops regardless of whether they are located in civilian facilities, President Vladimir Putin has said.
Putin was speaking to Russia 1 TV on Monday, when he was asked about the recent Easter ceasefire and a Ukrainian proposal that the sides declare a bilateral halt to strikes on civilian targets.
“This needs to be sorted out. This is all a subject for a thorough study,” Putin said, adding that Moscow is not ruling out such a decision.
Kiev has repeatedly used civilian infrastructure for military needs, Putin stressed, addressing recent Russian long-range attacks.
“Everybody knows the strike that our armed forces delivered at a university congress center in Sumy. Is that a civilian site? Sure. But it was being used to award troops who had committed crimes in Kursk Region,” he said.
“We consider those people criminals who must face accountability for what they did” during the incursion into the Russian border region, Putin explained. “This was done precisely to punish them.”
Moscow carried out another attack on an agricultural facility in Ukraine’s Odessa Region, where Kiev and its foreign backers were running a weapons testing operation, Putin added.
“The Kiev authorities together with foreign curators and assistants organized, tried to organize, the production and testing of a new missile system,” he said.
“It’s a civilian facility, civilian, but it was used for military purposes.”
Putin confirmed that as of Monday, the 30-hour truce between Russia and Ukraine was over. He cited Defense Ministry reports that while there had been a reduction of hostilities during the period, Ukraine’s forces violated the armistice thousands of times.
Kiev attempted to seize the initiative and proposed extending the ceasefire further, he noted.
Zelensky floated the idea of a unilateral halt on long-range strikes on non-military targets in a social media post on Sunday.
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