The President of Russia, Vladimir Putinsaid Thursday that his country will find “an antidote” against Patriot air defense systems that the United States will supply to Ukraine. “We will take it into account and we will find an antidote,” she told a news conference in Moscow after taking part in a State Council meeting on youth policies.
According to Putin, the Patriots are “quite old” systems and don’t work “as well” as the Russian S-300. “We’ll crunch them like nuts,” he said of the US missiles. The State Department announced Wednesday, coinciding with a visit to Washington by Volodimir Zelensky, that he will supply kyiv with Patriot systems to counter Moscow airstrikes.
For Putin, the new US shipments to Ukraine only “prolong the conflict.” When asked about the peace negotiations with Ukraine, Putin said that “all armed conflicts end in one way or another in negotiations” and that Moscow does not give up on it either. “But the Ukrainian authorities have prohibited entering into negotiations with Russia“, he pointed.
According to the spokesman for the Russian presidency, Dmitri Peskov, during Zelensky’s visit there have been no “true calls for peace” or “warnings” from the United States to the Ukrainian president against “the continuous bombing of residential buildings in populated areas of Donbass.” , a region of eastern Ukraine controlled in part by pro-Russian separatists and often targeted by Ukrainian forces.