US urges Putin to ‘acknowledge reality’ after ‘war’ reference
The United States has called on Vladimir Putin to acknowledge reality and withdraw troops from Ukraine after the Russian president finally called the conflict a “war”.
Agence France-Presse reported that since Putin ordered the invasion in February, Russia has officially spoken of a “special military operation” and imposed a law that criminalises what authorities call misleading terminology.
But at a news conference on Thursday, Putin used the word “war” as he said that he hoped to end it as soon as possible.
A State Department spokesperson said on Friday:
Since February 24, the United States and rest of the world knew that Putin’s ‘special military operation’ was an unprovoked and unjustified war against Ukraine. Finally, after 300 days, Putin called the war what it is.
As a next step in acknowledging reality, we urge him to end this war by withdrawing his forces from Ukraine.
The State Department said that, whatever Putin’s terminology, “Russia’s aggression against its sovereign neighbour has resulted in death, destruction and displacement”.
The people of Ukraine no doubt find little consolation in Putin stating the obvious, nor do the tens of thousands of Russian families whose relatives have been killed fighting Putin’s war.
A Russian court earlier this month sentenced an opposition politician, Ilya Yashin, to eight-and-a-half years in prison under the new law over his “false information” about the war.
Yashin had spoken of a “massacre” in Bucha, the town near Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv where the bullet-ridden bodies of Ukrainians in civilian clothes with hands tied behind their backs were discovered after Russian forces retreated.
An opposition legislator critical of the invasion, Nikita Yuferev, on Friday said he was seeking legal action against Putin for spreading “fake news” over his “war” reference.
(source: theguardian.com)
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