Russian armed forces are creating a \u201csecurity buffer zone\u201d along the border between Russia and Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday. <\/p>\n
\u201cI have already said that a decision was made to create the necessary security buffer zone along the border. Our armed forces are currently solving this problem. Enemy firing points are being actively suppressed, the work is underway,\u201d Putin said. <\/p>\n
Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi said the plan was \u201caggressive\u201d and demonstrated that \u201cRussia is the obstacle of peace efforts now.\u201d <\/p>\n
Thursday\u2019s announcement was made ahead of an expected prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia on Friday \u2013 an outcome of last week\u2019s face-to-face talks in Turkey, the first time the two countries have held direct talks at any level in three years. <\/p>\n
The Russian president previously raised the possibility of creating a \u201cbuffer zone\u201d in March during a visit to Russia\u2019s Kursk region. He doubled down on the border plan during a meeting on Thursday with members of the government, during which he discussed the need to \u201crestore and rebuild everything that was destroyed\u201d in the border region. <\/p>\n
\u201c(We must) help people return to their native villages, settlements, (and) where security conditions allow, restore all transport and other infrastructure,\u201d Putin added. <\/p>\n
The Russian leader is planning on hosting a dedicated meeting to discuss the \u201crestoration\u201d projects, Russian state media reported on Thursday. <\/p>\n
The announcement comes days after Putin visited Russia\u2019s Kursk region for the first time since claiming to have completely retaken the region from Ukrainian forces, state media reported on Wednesday. <\/p>\n
During the visit, the Russian leader said that Ukrainian forces were trying to move toward the Russian border, according to RIA Novosti news agency. <\/p>\n
Kyiv launched its offensive into the Russian border territory last August \u2013 the first ground invasion of Russia by a foreign power since World War II \u2013 and had held control of parts of the region until late last month. Kyiv had intended on using it as a key bargaining chip in any peace talks. <\/p>\n
Such dialogue did not materialize until last week, when teams from Kyiv and Moscow met in person in Turkey to begin discussing an end to the war and agreed upon a prisoner exchange \u2013 1,000 people from each side. <\/p>\n
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that Russia had received Ukraine\u2019s proposed list of prisoners of war to be exchanged in Friday\u2019s expected swap, according to Russian state media. <\/p>\n
\u201cYes, indeed, we have received it now,\u201d Peskov was reported as saying when asked about the Ukrainian list. <\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on X Thursday that Ukraine is \u201cclarifying the details for each individual included on the lists submitted by the Russian side.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThe agreement to release 1,000 of our people from Russian captivity was perhaps the only tangible result of the meeting in T\u00fcrkiye. We are working to ensure that this result is achieved,\u201d Zelensky posted. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Russian armed forces are creating a \u201csecurity buffer zone\u201d along the border between Russia and Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday. \u201cI have already said that a decision was made to create the necessary security buffer zone along the border. Our armed forces are currently solving this problem. Enemy firing points are being actively suppressed, <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16591,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16590","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}