Russian President Vladimir Putin told a televised meeting with teachers on Wednesday that Russia has “great respect” for the Ukrainian people despite what he called the “current situation,” Reuters reported.

Referring to the four regions of Ukraine partially controlled by Russia, which he declared Russian territory on Friday, Putin said he expected the situation to “stabilize” there.

“We assume that the situation will stabilize, we will be able to calmly develop these territories,” Putin said in his televised address.

His spokesman said earlier that the four regions are facing an intensive adaptation process and it will be difficult.

After Ukraine’s victories over the past few weeks, Russia does not fully control any of the four regions. In two of them, it has not yet defined the boundaries of the territory it claims.

Putin also noted that he has great respect for the Ukrainian people.

“Always, and even today, despite the current tragedy, we have great respect for the Ukrainian people, culture, language, Ukrainian literature, etc.,” he said.

Putin made the comments as Ukrainian troops advance into Luhansk, according to the region’s Ukrainian governor, who Putin added in his decree on Friday.

“Now it’s official. The liberation of Luhansk region has begun. Several settlements have already been liberated from the hands of the Russian army,” Gaidai said in a video posted on Telegram, without specifying the names of these settlements.

“The Ukrainian flag was raised there by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. We are advancing thanks to our Armed Forces,” Gaidai emphasized.

By the way, the city of Lyman in Donetsk region, another region illegally annexed by Putin on Friday, was also liberated.

The Russian occupation authorities of the Luhansk and Kherson regions announced on Tuesday that the advance of Ukrainian troops on certain areas of the front had been stopped, although primarily in the Kherson part the Russian army was forced to retreat before the advance of Ukrainian troops.

The leader of the Kherson occupiers, Volodymyr Saldo, recognized the Ukrainian “infiltration” and the loss of the village of Duchane by Russian troops, but assured that the Russian aircraft “stopped” the advance of Ukrainian troops, who on Monday advanced dozens of villages. kilometers along the western bank of the Dnieper, trying to surround a group of approximately 20,000 Russian soldiers from the eastern bank of the river.

The Ukrainian army retook the settlements of Arkhangelske and Myrolyubivka, and the Russian troops also withdrew from the settlements of Zolota Balka and Oleksandrivka.

In recent weeks, Ukrainian troops have focused their fire on Russian positions and warehouses on the right bank of the Dnieper and on the bridges across this river.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi said in his message on Monday evening that “new villages have been liberated in several regions”, and in recent days more and more footage has appeared showing soldiers raising the Ukrainian flag in villages in the north of the Kherson region.

The eponymous capital of this southern Ukrainian province, which was almost entirely occupied at the start of the invasion launched in February, is the only major Ukrainian city captured by Russian forces since then.

Thus, Putin’s statements about “great respect” for the Ukrainian people would be nothing more than a facade, a grand theater as usual, while Ukrainian troops seem to be destroying his entire “fictional world.”

He talks about respect for Ukrainians, and he illegally annexed regions, and his troops left tortured and killed civilians in Buch and Kharkiv, as well as in all areas where Russian soldiers were retreating.

After a series of sharp defeats suffered by Russian forces in recent weeks following Ukrainian counteroffensives, particularly in the northeastern region of Kharkiv, where the Ukrainian army has recaptured more than 450 settlements, Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to mobilize 300,000 reservists to reinforce the force. on the Ukrainian front.

The mobilization is also seen as a setback for Putin, as hundreds of thousands of Russians are trying to escape the mobilization to visa-free countries such as Georgia, Kazakhstan.

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