The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin has taken a mass bath in a Moscow stadium, on the occasion of the eighth anniversary of the invasion of Crimea. But in the middle of the speech he suddenly disappeared from television, when he praised the heroism of the soldiers deployed in Ukraine. Putin was praising the heroism of the Russian soldiers deployed in Ukraine, before tens of thousands of people in the Olympic stadium, when suddenly the Russian public television network Rossiya-24 began to show other moments of the same event, official speeches and popular songs . Fifteen minutes later, television resumed the broadcast of the Russian president’s intervention on a delayed basis.
Putin on the anniversary of the seizure of Crimea. He says that Russia rescued them from a humiliating situation. And he cuts off the broadcast just as he is about to say that “by pure coincidence, the start of the special operation in the Ukraine was on the day of the birth of…” pic.twitter.com/JcmlDDCSo8
— Sandro Pozzi (@sandro_pozzi) March 18, 2022
More than 200,000 Russians supported this Friday the “special military operation” at the Luzhniki Olympic stadium in Moscow, according to data from the Ministry of the Interior. “For a world without Nazism!”, “For the president!” and “For Russia!”, indicated the slogans that could be read on the stage of the act, which included several concerts by popular singers close to the Kremlin.
Tens of thousands of people who could not access the stadium followed the concerts in the vicinity of the Luzhniki, which has a capacity for more than 80,000 spectators. “Thanks to the guys who with weapons in their hands defend Russian citizens in Donbas,” said Sergei Sobyanin, mayor of Moscow. “Half the world has united against us, but Russia is a strong country. Strong because of its citizens, because of its patriots,” he said.
Putin also spoke this Friday with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, before whom he accused kyiv of trying to bog down the bilateral negotiations to put an end to what he calls Russian “special military operation” in Ukraine with “unrealistic new proposals”. The conversation lasted nearly an hour and Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov described it as “tough, not at all friendly”.
As reported by the Kremlin, the Russian president has expressed to the head of the German government that “the kyiv regime aspires to bog down the negotiation process as much as possible, by presenting new unrealistic proposals every time.” “Despite this, the Russian side is ready to continue the search for solutions within the framework of our principled approaches that are well known to all,” the Russian Presidency added in a statement.
In a concise note, the Berlin Chancellery reported that Scholz has asked Putin to authorize a ceasefire in Ukraine and move towards a diplomatic solution to the conflict. The call with Moscow had Ukraine as the only point on the agenda, and it has served for Scholz to also demand a improvement of the humanitarian situationaccording to the brief note released by his office.
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The Kremlin note was much more extensive. The Russian president drew the German politician’s attention to the missile attacks against residential neighborhoods of Donetsk and Makéevka, in eastern Ukraine, for which Moscow blames the Ukrainian Army. “These war crimes were ignored by the West,” the Kremlin said, reiterating that the Russian Armed Forces “do everything possible to save human lives, in particular by organizing safe corridors for the withdrawal of civilians from cities”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov called the two leaders’ conversation “quite complex but absolutely pragmatic.” “The conversation could not be described as friendly, it was a tough conversation, naturally. However, the need to maintain these contacts, this exchange of information and debate on incisive issues, linked to the special operation, remains,” said the representative of The presidency.