On June 28, Vladimir Putin gave a 25-minute interview to Pavel Zarubin in which he said the fuel shortage in Russia remained “non-critical” and set out the Kremlin’s position on Ukraine’s new proposals to stop deep strikes on each other’s territory.
Fuel shortage
Putin acknowledged that attacks on infrastructure were causing problems. He said that to address the fuel shortage, Russia needed to rapidly increase production of the most in-demand air defense systems, speed up repairs at oil refineries, and secure the necessary volume of fuel imports.
“We are now seeing a certain shortage, but it is not critical,” the Russian president said.
He also said that, in his view, damaged facilities were being restored quickly enough and that the resulting difficulties were not becoming critical. Putin separately said fuel supplies to Crimea would be increased by land and sea. The peninsula had previously faced a gasoline shortage after Ukrainian strikes on the R-280 Novorossiya highway, which is used to supply the annexed region.
Ukraine’s proposals
According to Putin, Kyiv proposed that both sides stop conducting deep strikes on each other’s territory, but the Kremlin rejected the offer. He said the refusal was based on the claim that Russia’s retaliatory strikes were more powerful and more painful.
Putin also said that Ukraine had proposed limiting combat to the territories of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions, while stopping hostilities elsewhere. Russia also rejected that option, he said, because it believed this would allow Ukrainian forces to redeploy troops from the Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, and Sumy regions.
Anchorage and Trump
Speaking about the Anchorage summit, Putin confirmed that no formal agreements had been reached there. At the same time, he said, the participants discussed compromises and possible ways to end the war. He also commented on reports that European leaders may have influenced Donald Trump’s position and said he knew nothing about that.
Faridaily noted that Putin appeared to have used a teleprompter during the interview.