President Vladimir Putin on Friday claimed that Russian forces were making significant advances along the front line in Ukraine and announced increased missile production, just days after U.S. President Donald Trump called on him to end the war or face new sanctions.
“Our troops are advancing along the entire line of contact... in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions,” Putin told reporters, framing his military’s summer offensive as the return of what he called Russian territory. “It’s ours,” he said.
Those comments came a day after the Russian Defense Ministry said its forces had captured the eastern Ukrainian town of Chasiv Yar following more than a year of heavy fighting. The Ukrainian army denied the capture on Thursday, in response to which Putin called military authorities in Kyiv “uninformed.”
Speaking alongside Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko at the Valaam Monastery in northern Russia, Putin insisted on Friday that he remained open to peace, despite intensifying attacks on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, including a missile strike the day before that killed over 30 people.
“We need a lasting and durable peace built on solid foundations, foundations that would satisfy both Russia and Ukraine and ensure the security of both countries,” the Kremlin leader said. “And perhaps those Ukrainian negotiators are right who, cautiously, I should note, have floated the idea that maybe we need to talk about European security as a whole.”
He also responded to Trump’s remarks from earlier this week, in which the U.S. president said he was “very disappointed” in Putin over launching deadly attacks against Ukrainian cities despite holding “nice and respectful conversations” over the phone.
“High expectations are the root of all disappointment,” Putin said, adding that negotiations must happen “quietly, in the calm of the negotiation process.” In that regard, he called Ukraine’s early response to compromise “positive,” but did not elaborate further.
Lukashenko, echoing Putin’s stance, criticized Trump’s Aug. 8 deadline to end the war.
“This is a military confrontation. You can’t simply make demands, especially when dealing with a nuclear power,” the Belarusian leader said, dismissing the idea of setting a deadline for making peace. “Honestly, it just makes me laugh.”
In a potential signal that Moscow does not plan to back down in its war against Ukraine, Putin also announced the deployment of Russia’s first operational unit of the nuclear-capable Oreshnik hypersonic missile.
“We’ve readied the first mass-produced Oreshnik system, the first missile in the series. And it has already been delivered to the troops for deployment,” he told reporters at the Valaam Monastery. “Now the production line is up and running.”
Last November, Putin unveiled the Oreshnik in what Western officials described at the time as a Kremlin propaganda campaign aimed at reigniting nuclear fears in Kyiv and Western capitals.
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