Vladimir Putin has referred to Russia’s Ukraine invasion as a “war” for the first time publicly and expressed willingness to end the conflict with an inevitable “diplomatic solution”, in a series of rare remarks.
“Our goal is not to spin the flywheel of military conflict, but, on the contrary, to end this war,” he said.
“We will strive for an end to this, and the sooner the better, of course,” Mr Putin said just a day after US president Joe Biden hosted Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House.
Meanwhile, a fire broke out on the Admiral Kuznetsov, a flagship vessel of the Russian Navy and Mr Putin’s only aircraft carrier while it was docked at the Zvyozdochka shipyard in the Barents Sea port city of Murmansk, located in Russia’s far north-west, news agency Tass said.
Aleksey Rakhmanov, head of the state-owned United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) which is overseeing a refit of the carrier, was quoted as saying that the small fire was quickly extinguished. No casualties were reported.
