Russian President Vladimir Putin visits a command post of Russian forces. Image taken from a video posted on the official Telegram account of the Kremlin press office on December 27, 2025. PHOTO: AFP / AFP / Profimedia
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Ukraine is in no hurry to achieve peace and that if it does not want to resolve the conflict peacefully, then Moscow will achieve all its goals by force, Reuters reported on Sunday.
“If the authorities in Kiev do not want to solve this problem peacefully, we will solve all the problems we face by military means,” Putin said.
Putin's remarks on Saturday, reported by the state-run TASS news agency, followed a massive Russian strike involving hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles, prompting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to say Russia was showing its willingness to continue the war, while Kiev wanted peace.
Zelenskiy will meet US President Donald Trump in Florida on Sunday to seek a solution to the war that Putin started nearly four years ago with a large-scale invasion of Russia's tiny neighbor.
The White House did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment on Putin's latest remarks.
Russian commanders told Putin during an inspection visit that Moscow forces had captured the towns of Mîrnohrad, Rodinske and Artemivka in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region, as well as the towns of Huliaipole and Stepnohirsk in the Zaporizhia region, the Kremlin said earlier in an announcement published on the Telegram messaging app.
The Ukrainian military has labeled Moscow's claims about Huliaipole and Mîrnohrad as false. The situation in both places remains “difficult,” but “defensive operations” by Ukrainian troops continue, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a statement published online.
The Southern Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported on Telegram that “intense fighting” continues in Huliaipole. “However, a substantial part of Huliaipole continues to be controlled by the Defense Forces of Ukraine.”
Verifying information from the battlefield is difficult because access is restricted on both sides, information is tightly controlled, and the front lines change rapidly, with the media relying on satellite and geolocated images that can be partial or delayed.
