KEY POINTS
- Russia accuses Ukraine of a drone attack on a high-rise building in Kazan.
- Putin says ready to normalise ties with the US and Western nations.
- Russia claims the capture of two villages in eastern Ukraine.
MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday vowed to bring more “destruction” to Ukraine in retaliation for a drone attack on a high-rise apartment building in the central Russian city of Kazan a day earlier.
Russia accused Ukraine of a “massive” drone attack that hit a multi-storey building in Kazan city, some 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the frontier.
“Whoever, and however much they try to destroy, they will face many times more destruction themselves and will regret what they are trying to do in our country,” Putin said in comments on the attack on Kazan during a televised government meeting.
Putin was addressing the local leader of Tatarstan, the region where Kazan is located, in a road-opening ceremony via video link.
The strike on Kazan was the latest in a series of escalating aerial attacks in the nearly three-year conflict.
Videos on Russian social media networks showed drones hitting a high-rise glass building and setting off fireballs, though there were no reported casualties as a result of the strike.
Ukraine has not commented on the strike.
Putin has previously threatened to target the centre of Kyiv with a hypersonic ballistic missile in response to Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory.
And the defence ministry has called Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities over recent weeks retaliatory hits for Kyiv using Western-supplied missiles to hit Russian air bases and arms factories.
Normalising Ties with US
In an interview with VGTRK journalist Pavel Zarubin on Sunday, Putin said that Moscow is ready to normalise relations with the United States and other Western nations but without compromising its interests.
“It is possible to do everything upon wish. We have never abandoned this wish,” he said.
Everything changes in international relations and only interests remain consistent, in this case, “the interests of Russia and its people,” Putin stressed.
“If we see that the situation changes in a way that there are opportunities and prospects for building relations with other countries, then we are ready for that. It is not a question of us but it’s a question of them. But this should be without detriment to the interests of the Russian Federation,” he emphasised.
He added the previous generation of Russian politicians chose the path towards the country’s destruction for the sake of joining the so-called civilised world.
“In the newest history, we have passed the period when our previous generation of politicians, in my view, set course even towards the destruction of their own country in the hope that Russia would become a part of the so-called civilised world. And this was what the civilised world wanted,” the Russian leader said.
Earlier, Russian state agency TASS cited Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying that Russia was ready to consider any proposals from the United States to bring mutual relations back to normal.
Russia Claims Advances in Ukraine
The latest threat comes as Russia claimed fresh advances on the battlefield in east Ukraine.
The defence ministry said on Telegram that its troops had “liberated” the villages of Lozova in the northeastern Kharkiv region and Krasnoye — called Sontsivka in Ukraine.
The latter is close to the resource hub of Kurakhove, which Russia has almost encircled and would be a key prize in Moscow’s attempt to capture the entire Donetsk region.
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Russia has accelerated its advance across eastern Ukraine in recent months, looking to secure as much territory as possible before US President-elect Donald Trump comes to power in January.
The Republican has promised to bring a swift end to the nearly three-year-long conflict, without proposing any concrete terms for a ceasefire or peace deal.
Moscow’s army claims to have seized more than 190 Ukrainian settlements this year, with Kyiv struggling to hold the line in the face of manpower and ammunition shortages.
