Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country’s forces were facing challenging conditions in the four Ukrainian provinces they partially occupy.
Russian state-run news agency TASS, Putin in a video address urged the country’s security and intelligence agencies to “significantly improve” their work and keep up efforts to “prevent terrorist attacks.”to describe the destruction of the bridge connecting Russia with the illegally annexed peninsula of Crimea in October.
The Russian leader added that the security situation was “extremely complicated” in the four occupied Ukrainian territories—which Moscow claimed to illegally annex following a sham referendum earlier this year—as he urged the security agencies to do everything needed to ensure the safety of “Russian people” living there.
Putin added that it was necessary to “put an end once and for all to the activities of foreign special services, and to promptly identify traitors, spies and saboteurs.” Since the start of the invasion Putin and his allies have repeatedly claimed without evidence that they are fighting against Western military forces, mercenaries and “neo-Nazis” in Ukraine.
Putin also ordered Russia’s Federal Security Service to ensure that all public gatherings in these occupied regions are “under constant control,” adding that additional experienced personnel and equipment will be sent to these areas, theAfter its forces were humiliatingly routed in the north-east Ukrainian region of Kharkiv, Russia in September announced it was conducting a referendum in the occupied provinces of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia—widely derided by Ukraine and the West...
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