Russian President Vladimir Putin said that peace talks with Ukraine were at a “dead end”. He said that the Russian military invaded to protect the Russian-speaking people in the Donbas region of Ukraine and that the war will “continue until its full completion and the fulfillment of the tasks that have been set,”
Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, took issue with Putin’s claims: “Russia claimed their goal in is to ‘protect people in Donbas.’ Right now mobile crematoria are burning people’s bodies in Mariupol, the second largest city of the region. Those who survived are dying from starvation. What are you ‘protecting’ them from? From life?”
Thinking Man's Politics 