Monly war with Ukraine, and no negotiation with Zelensky’s “Nazi junta”, will be the price of the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk, Moscow is loudly proclaiming, threatening that “the West risks provoking a world war over Ukraine”. Russian forces are advancing on the Pokrovsk front, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky assuring in his speech that Ukrainian forces are strengthening their forces accordingly in the region.

Its mayor Moscow announced in the early hours of Wednesday that the Russian capital was the target of a Ukrainian drone strike, “one of the largest ever launched,” against what he said was the heart of Russian power.

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, “11 drones were destroyed» during the night over the territory of Moscow and its periphery.

“Zero possibility of negotiation”

Ukraine’s attack on the Kursk region a priori (in advance) nullifies the chances of any negotiation with the current regime in Kiev, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday Maria Zakharova at a press conference.

“The Kiev regime is looking for an excuse for its terrorist attack in the Kursk region and is finding false arguments, even more ridiculous. They are trying to cover up all the atrocities committed by the Ukrainian army with “drawn-out” rhetoric,” Zakharova claimed, according to TASS. “In the beginning, officials on Bankovaya Street (where the Ukrainian presidency is located) talked about some goal of “strengthening the negotiating positions” of the Kiev regime. In the meantime, the question they apparently leave unanswered is who will agree to negotiate with them after their atrocities and terror against civilians, urban infrastructure and political facilities.”

“The attempt of the Ukrainian army to invade our territory – I should emphasize once again what was said by the Russian leadership – cancels a priori the possibility of any negotiation with the Nazi junta,” stressed Zakharova.

He also cited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s statements about “Ukraine’s goal to create a safe zone in this Russian region.”

“None of the Western journalists – American, British, German, Italian or French – tried to find out how the two goals can be combined: a ‘security zone’, or the ‘strengthening of the negotiating positions,'” he noted. Zakharova.

“Obviously, Zelensky’s goal is to use such appeals to the people to raise his shattered popularity, prove his falsity and even attract funding from Western donors,” the Russian official said. “Of course, this whole criminal scheme of the Kiev regime was obviously doomed from the start.”

“Representatives of Western media, who are literally not journalists, but participants in propaganda actions, in violation of the procedures provided for by the legislation of our country, accompanied by Ukrainian fighters, are on Russian territory,” he said, adding that a specific category of visa and accreditation is needed for the “legal visit” to Russia.

“West risks world war over Ukraine”

Sergei Chemezov, a close aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, says the United States and its Western allies risk provoking a world war if Washington continues to “provoke” the conflict in Ukraine and allow Kiev to attack Russian soil. .

His exclusive remarks to Reuters provide a rare insight into the inner circle’s thoughts on Putin after Ukraine’s surprise invasion of Russia’s Kursk region, to which the president has promised a “worthy” response but has yet to say what it will entail.

Chemezov, chief executive of the Rostec group that supplies many of the weapons Russia uses in the war, said Russia feels confident and has enough weapons more than two years after the start of what the Kremlin calls its special military operation in Ukraine.

He reiterated the Kremlin’s position that the conflict is a battle between the West and Russia.

“In a situation where the West, led by the United States, provokes war, we must be ready,” Chemezov said in written responses to an interview request. “Third year of special operation underway — Russia feels confident.”

He said no one could provide a time frame for when the war might end and accused the US of fueling the conflict by supplying weapons to Kiev and allowing strikes deep inside Russia.

“The further it goes, the greater the risk that the world will be dragged into a global conflict. It seems strange, but Western countries don’t seem to understand how dangerous this is for them.”

The comments by Chemezov, a former KGB general who served with Putin in East Germany before the collapse of the Soviet Union, were sent to Reuters after the start of the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk.

Putin said last week that Russian forces would expel Ukrainian troops from Russian territory, but they remain on Russian soil.

He said in June that he might deploy conventional missiles within range of the US and its European allies if they let Ukraine strike deeper into Russia with Western long-range weapons.

Economic war

Chemezov, 71, has been under sanctions by the US and the European Union since Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014.

He said it was a “myth” that there were empty shelves in Russian stores because of sanctions and rising defense spending.

“Go to any Russian supermarket and see for yourself – everything is fine with ‘butter’,” he said. “Russia has enough ‘cannons’. We have increased the production of weapons many times over.”

The sanctions have disrupted supply chains, forcing Rostec to push back deadlines for the Yakovlev MC-21 passenger plane and replace about 40 imported components on the Superjet-1000, but none of this is bad for Russia or Rostec, he said.

Rostec’s production will increase by tens of thousands this year, he said, calling the withdrawal from the Russian market of companies such as Boeing and Airbus an “opportunity” for Rostec, for which he wants to say “thank you.”

“We have overcome the basic pressure. We managed to draw advantages from the situation and draw the necessary conclusions. One of them is: no more joint operations on the basis of trust with Western countries,” Chemezov said.

Russia is the third largest arms exporter after the US and France, although its share of the global market will decline in 2023 due to the war in Ukraine, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Chemezov said defense companies would continue to make a significant contribution to Russia’s economy even after the conflict in Ukraine.

Arms exports have declined, but there are signs of significant pent-up demand from abroad, he said, in part because Russian weapons have proven their worth on the battlefield in Ukraine. “Our partners show understanding and are ready to wait,” Chemezov said, without naming them. “There is already a significant queue on the ‘waiting list’.”

“To the utter destruction of the enemy!”

Her raid Ukrainian in its Russian region Kursk means there will be no talks between Moscow and Kiev until Ukraine is completely defeated on the battlefield, he said this morning and Dmitry Medvedevvice president of the Russian Security Council, as the Ukrainian armed forces announced that they had hit an S-300 missile system in the Russian region of Rostov.

“The casual chatter of uninvited mediators on the peace issue has stopped. Even if they can’t say it out loud, everyone recognizes the reality of the situation,” Medvedev wrote on his official Telegram account.

“They understand that THERE ARE NO NEGOTIATIONS UNTIL THE ENEMY IS TOTALLY DESTROYED!”

Medvedev, who has assumed the role of the Kremlin’s toughest of anti-Western hawks, argued that “premature and unnecessary” peace talks, which had been proposed earlier, “had confused prospects and no tangible results.”

Also in Kiev, the Ukrainian armed forces announced today that they had shot down an S-300 anti-aircraft missile system in the southern Russian region of Rostov overnight.

The Ukrainian General Staff announced that the attack took place near the settlement of Novosakhtinsk and that the S-300s had been used to attack civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.

“Explosions occurred at designated targets,” the General Staff said in a statement. “The accuracy of the blow is assessed.”

Rostov Governor Vassily Golubov said air defense forces had shot down a Ukrainian missile over the district, but the Russian Defense Ministry made no mention of the incident in its daily announcement of air weapons destroyed by Russian forces.

Zelensky’s speech on Pokrosfk

In his televised address, Zelensky urged Kyiv’s partners to stick to the agreed timetable for supplying of Ukrainian army with ammunition. He added that the offensive launched by his country in Russia’s Kursk region on August 6 was continuing, and said that the Ukrainians controlled “some areas”, without elaborating.

Civilians are fleeing Pokrovsk in droves today, in the face of advancing Russian forces that continue to close in on this major logistics hub in eastern Ukraine, despite Kiev’s offensive on Kursk.

Check out this Instagram post.

The post was shared by Volodymyr Zelenskyy (@zelenskyy_official)

The Russian army has been occupying village after village in recent weeks in this sector of the eastern front and is now some ten kilometers from Pokrovsk, a town of 53,000 inhabitants. Ukrainian authorities called earlier this week for an urgent evacuation of the city.

Maxim, a 40-year-old man met by AFP reporters as he fled, spoke of a “very tense” situation that was getting worse by the hour. The eight-story building where he lived was recently bombed while he was walking home.

“I decided to leave because life is more important,” said Maxim, who works in a Pokrovsk mine.

Anatoly, 60, said he witnessed two bombings. “What a waste! But, thank God, everyone survived. People are leaving,” he said.

Regional authorities on Monday ordered the “forced evacuation” of families with children from Pokrovsk, a town leading to the fortified Ukrainian positions of Chasiv Yar and Kostiantynivka.

Earlier today, the Russian army announced that it had captured another village in the area, Zelanie, which is 20 km east of Pokrovsk. Yesterday he announced that he had brought under his control the town of New York – highly symbolic because of its name – in the Toretsk region. Ukrainian military and bloggers today assured that a part of New York is still controlled by Kiev.