{"id":356723,"date":"2025-12-20T02:05:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T02:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/356723\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T02:05:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T02:05:11","slug":"in-marathon-year-end-press-conference-putin-looks-back-in-anger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/356723\/","title":{"rendered":"In marathon year-end press conference, Putin looks back in anger"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s annual marathon press conference<\/a> is perhaps best summarized as a mashup of a municipal board meeting and geopolitical talkfest. The Kremlin leader makes sweeping pronouncements about the current global order, interspersed with small-bore questions from local journalists about the quality of roads in the Komi Republic.\n <\/p>\n

\n But this year\u2019s direct-line event comes on the heels of Europe throwing a $105 billion lifeline to Ukraine in the form of an interest-free loan to keep Kyiv in the fight against Moscow.\n <\/p>\n

\n While Brussels stopped short of enacting a controversial proposal<\/a> to divert billions in frozen Russian assets held in Europe to Ukraine, the loan quite literally gives the Ukrainians time \u2013 and ammunition \u2013 as the war launched by Putin in February 2022 approaches the four-year mark.\n <\/p>\n

\n Perhaps with that aid package in mind, Putin was pretty unsparing in his remarks on the war. He began by listing Moscow\u2019s incremental gains on the battlefield, saying Russia was \u201cadvancing across the whole of the front line,\u201d and reeled off a list of towns and villages that Russian forces now claim full or partial control over.\n <\/p>\n

\"Putin's<\/p>\n

\n Putin also deflected blame for the extraordinary loss of life, claiming against all evidence that the Kremlin \u201cdid not start this war.\u201d But the Russian president did signal a sort of openness to reaching a negotiated end to the conflict, saying Russia was \u201cready and willing to end this conflict peacefully, based on the principles I outlined last June at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and by addressing the root causes that led to this crisis.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n But that phrase \u2013 \u201cthe root causes\u201d \u2013 is an important caveat. It\u2019s Putin\u2019s shorthand for the same demands that he made to Ukraine and the West on the eve of the full-scale invasion: Kyiv\u2019s complete withdrawal from the Donbas region, no more NATO expansion and some form of regime change in Ukraine.\n <\/p>\n

\n Back in 2022, Putin used a longstanding grievance about NATO expansion after the end of the Cold War to make his case for going to war against Ukraine. He echoed the same sentiments on Friday, saying in response to a question from BBC reporter Steve Rosenberg that there wouldn\u2019t be more \u201cspecial military operations\u201d like the full-scale invasion of Ukraine \u201cif you treat us with respect.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n That language of resentment \u2013 \u201cthey simply screwed us over,\u201d to use Putin\u2019s words \u2013 glosses over the fact that the 2022 invasion of Ukraine actually prompted the expansion of NATO<\/a> in the Nordic region.\n <\/p>\n

\n But it also suggests that Putin\u2019s red lines have not really shifted as the Trump administration presses ahead with an unconventional diplomatic effort <\/a>to bring the warring parties to the negotiating table.\n <\/p>\n

\n US President Donald Trump\u2019s special envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to meet with Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia\u2019s sovereign wealth fund and a key Putin aide, in Miami on Friday to discuss the latest iteration of a proposal to end the war in Ukraine.\n <\/p>\n

\n On Friday, Putin complimented Trump for his efforts to end the war, saying the American president was \u201cmaking serious efforts to end the conflict.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n It is as yet unclear how sincere Putin is about ending the same war.\n <\/p>\n

\n CNN\u2019s Anna Chernova, Christian Edwards, Katharina Krebs and Alejandra Jaramillo contributed reporting.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s annual marathon press conference is perhaps best summarized as a mashup of a municipal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-356723","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-economy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}