Russia\u2019s \u2018spring offensive\u2019 is failing and Kyiv\u2019s drones have brought the war to Moscow and other cities. Europe must strengthen Zelenskyy\u2019s hand further<\/p>\n
Last week, Vladimir Putin responded with characteristic disdain to an open letter<\/a> from Volodymyr Zelenskyy calling for face-to-face talks. Declining to mention Ukraine\u2019s president by name at an economic forum in St Petersburg, he said that he saw \u201cno point<\/a>\u201d in a meeting and insisted that all Russia\u2019s war aims, including the annexation of the entirety of the eastern Donbas region, were on course to be met.<\/p>\n Mr Putin is \u201cin blood stepped in so far\u201d that agreeing to a ceasefire while those messianic goals remain unachieved may seem more politically dangerous than continuing a war which has cost an estimated<\/a> 500,000 Russian lives. But as a concerted Ukrainian drone attack<\/a> on St Petersburg the next day vividly illustrated, his confident assertions are increasingly belied by facts on the ground and in the air.<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Russia\u2019s \u2018spring offensive\u2019 is failing and Kyiv\u2019s drones have brought the war to Moscow and other cities. Europe must strengthen Zelenskyy\u2019s hand further Last week, Vladimir Putin responded with characteristic disdain to an open letter from Volodymyr Zelenskyy calling for face-to-face talks. Declining to mention Ukraine\u2019s president by name at an economic forum in St … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}