Vladimir Putin

Any deal should proceed from the assumption that this cessation should lead to long-term peace and eliminate the root causes of this crisis.

Our task in the near future, in the shortest possible time frame, is to decisively defeat the enemy entrenched in the Kursk region.

How will those 30 days be used? For Ukraine to mobilise? Rearm? Train people? Or none of that?

I want to oust all Ukrainian forces from Russian territory and even create a buffer zone inside Ukrainian territory.

Russia is committed to eliminating the root cause of the war and arriving at a lasting plan for peace.

As Vladimir Putin recently said, wars are won by teachers.

The anti-Russia project has been rejected by millions of Ukrainians. The people of Crimea and residents of Sevastopol made their historic choice.

As NATO expands to the east, with every passing year, the situation for our country is getting worse and more dangerous.

[There] should not be a brief truce, not some kind of respite for the regrouping of forces.

I believe Russia has become much stronger over the past 2 or 3 years. Why? Because we are becoming a truly sovereign country. We are no longer dependent on anyone.

In an effort to weaken our country and impose a strategic defeat on us, the United States continues to pump the virtually illegitimate ruling regime in Kyiv, full of weapons and money, sends mercenaries and military advisers, and thereby…

I will regard that -- I, Putin, will regard that as an attack from NATO on Russia.

There are currently no means of countering such a missile. No means of intercepting it in the world.

We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against the military objects of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our objects. And in the event of an escalation of aggressive actions, we will respond just as…

Putin now saying any aggression against Russia supported by a nuclear power could be met with a nuclear response.

Putin doesn't have anyone to blame except for himself. His involvement is huge.

The sponsors of Ukraine continue to try to use this country and its people as a battering ram.

Pyongyang has the right to take reasonable measures to strengthen its own defense capabilities, ensure national security, and protect sovereignty.

So far, the West has been ignoring our interests, he says. While they forbid Kyiv to negotiate, they hypocritically call on us to start some sort of negotiations. It just looks idiotic.

We have come on acceptably close to the point of no return, calls to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, which has the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons demonstrate the extreme adventurism of Western politicians.

If the West supplies weapons to the combat zone and calls for their use against our territory, then why shouldn't we mirror these actions?

If they in the West supply weapons to the zone of combat operations and call for the use of these weapons against our territory, then why do we not have the right to do the same to mirror these actions? I'm not ready to say that we'll do…

We know that the crime was committed by the hands of radical Islamists, follows of the ideology that their Islamic world itself has been fighting against for centuries.

It's remarkable that a man who sort of sells himself as the sort of center of stability, the guarantor of stability in Russia, has not yet said a word about this appalling terrorist attack that's taken place so close to his capital.

Vladimir Putin believed that was U.S. propaganda, U.S. scare-mongering, U.S. blackmail against the Russian Federation.