Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin recently held a press conference for the first time since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine War on February 24, 2022. Ahead of the second anniversary of the ongoing war, he announced: “No peace is possible in Ukraine till Russia achieves its goal!“

The Russian strongman holds an annual press conference every year. Although he had cancelled the conference in 2022, President Putin met the press in the third week of December 2023 to express his views on the war. He also talked about other important issues, including payments made to military personnel and their families, and the Russian economy, during the press conference.

The Russian President said that peace would return to Ukraine only if Kiev changed its decision to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), a US-led intergovernmental military alliance between 31 member-states, including 29 European and two North American countries. He further talked about reducing the influence of neo-Nazis in Ukraine, stressing that Russia would stop the special military operation in the neighbouring country, if Ukraine accepted demands of the Kremlin.

The President informed the press that Moscow deployed 617,000 troops in Ukraine. According to President Putin, his administration sent at least 244,000 soldiers to the former Soviet Republic in 2022. Now, Russia has no plan to deploy more troops in Ukraine. Meanwhile, President Putin did not reveal when Moscow would withdraw troops from Ukraine. Speaking at the year-end press conference, he stated: “There will be peace when we achieve our goals… they do not change. Let me remind you what we talked about then: the denazification of Ukraine, its demilitarisation, its neutral status.”

According to Putin, the 2014 Maidan Revolution made it clear that the West would not let Russia maintain normal ties with Ukraine. He claimed that the West’s desire to “creep towards our borders” and the conflict in Donbas had led to the protests, which ultimately resulted in the ousting of then-President (of Ukraine) Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych. “What the US conceived and organised, Europe stands and silently watches, or plays and sings along with them there. Well, how can we build relations with them?” he asked.

Rejecting The Idea Of A Palestinian State
It seems that bloodbath shall continue in West Asia, too; as Israel is reluctant to accept the Two-State Solution.

The UN passed a Gaza Ceasefire Resolution on December 14, 2023, with the majority of member-states claiming that they want the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas Movement to stop with an immediate effect. They also want Israel to accept the Two-State Policy and to co-exist with Palestine. However, the Jewish Nation is not ready to accept this policy.

Although the Joe Biden Administration still supports Israel at the UN, the US President has criticised the recent Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip. In the third week of December, President Biden also sent his National Security Adviser (NSA) Jacob ‘Jake’ Jeremiah Sullivan to Tel Aviv for holding talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu. During their meeting, Sullivan reportedly told Prime Minister Netanyahu that Washington DC wanted Tel Aviv to reduce its ground offensive in Gaza by the end of 2023.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom Tzipi Hotovely rejected the idea of a Palestinian State on December 15 (2023), saying that her country would never accept the Two-State Policy as a solution. Talking to the Sky News, she stressed: “I think it’s about time for the world to realise that the Oslo paradigm failed on the 7th of October and we need to build a new one. The reason the Oslo Accords failed is because the Palestinians never wanted to have a state next to Israel. They want to have a state from the river to the sea.” “Why are you obsessed with a formula that never worked, that created these radical people on the other side?” Hotovely asked her interviewer.

The envoy claimed that Israel basically wanted to re-educate the Gazans, stating that the global community had re-educated Germany and Japan after the Second World War. “Those two societies turned out to be good countries,” added Hotovely. She further said: “At the moment, under the UN name, the UNRWA schools are becoming terror schools. If you have the UN involvement, forget about refugee camps. Why should they be refugees after 70 years of having an independent life? They could have built their own life, but they did not.” Hotovely assured the international community that Israel would never govern Gaza. “Obviously, we are not interested in governing the Palestinians, but we are interested in making sure that Gaza would not become another terror hub. We will demilitarise Gaza… and we believe that together with our allies and with the moderate Arab countries, we can build a better future,” she told Sky News.

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das