Post #3224

🎙President of Russia Vladimir Putin's answers to media questions(December 2, 2025, Moscow) Read in full ❓Question: In a few hours you will meet Stephen Witkoff, who has travelled to Moscow specifically for the negotiating process. In fact, it now involves only the American Side. Why are the Europeans silent, why are they so detached from this process? 💬Vladimir Putin: The Europeans are not silent. They are offended that they have supposedly been excluded from the negotiating process. Let me be clear: no one excluded them – they excluded themselves. At one point we maintained close contact with them, and then they abruptly cut off relations with Russia. Why did they do this? Because they adopted the idea of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia and, apparently, still live under this illusion. Although they understand – rationally understand – that this is long in the past, that it was impossible. They mistook wishful thinking for reality at the time, but cannot and do not want to admit it to themselves. They removed themselves from this process – that is the first point. The second point – seeing that they are also unhappy with today’s outcome, they have started to hinder the efforts of the current US Administration and President Trump to achieve peace through negotiations. They refused peace talks themselves, and now they are obstructing President Trump. The third point – they have no peace agenda, as they are on the side of war. And even when they ostensibly try to introduce some adjustments to President Trump’s proposals – we see this clearly – all these adjustments are aimed at one thing only: to block the entire peace process, to put forward demands that are absolutely unacceptable to Russia (and they know this), and then to blame Russia for derailing the peace process. That is their goal. If they wish to align themselves with reality – with the situation that exists “on the ground”, as they say – they are welcome. We do not rule this out. ❓Question: Péter Szijjártó said today that Europe could find itself in a state of war with Russia. He says NATO, its European part, plans to bring its troops to full combat readiness by 2029, and that by 2030 there is a risk of armed conflict. Are we preparing for anything of this kind? 💬Vladimir Putin:We have no intention to fight Europe – I have said this a hundred times. But if Europe suddenly decides it wants a war with us and starts one, we are ready right now. There can be no doubt about that. The only question is this: if Europe does start a war with us, I believe events might escalate very quickly. This won't be Ukraine. In Ukraine, we are acting with surgical precision, carefully. It is not a "war" in the direct, modern sense of the word. But if Europe were to start a war with us, the situation could very quickly reach a point where there is... simply no one left for us to negotiate with. ❓ Question: Could you comment on the attacks on tankers off the coast of Türkiye? There was another such incident today. 💬Vladimir Putin: The Ukrainian armed forces have previously tried to strike our seaports. We responded – we did not initiate these operations – with similar strikes. This primarily concerned vessels delivering military equipment, hardware, and ammunition to Ukraine. Ukraine’s armed forces have crossed into piracy. What response measures are available to us? ❗️We will expand the range of our strikes against port facilities and against vessels and ships entering Ukrainian ports. If this continues, we will consider – I am not saying we will do it, but we will consider – taking retaliatory measures against ships of those countries that assist Ukraine in carrying out these piracy attacks. The most radical option is to cut Ukraine off from the seaentirely. That would make piracy impossible in principle. But all this would be escalatory. I hope that the Ukrainian military and political leadership, as well as those standing behind them, will reflect on whether it is worth continuing this practice.