Putin says war in Ukraine could be a ‘long process’

Russian president says there would be no further mobilisation of troops

Russian president Vladimir Putin holds the annual meeting of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights on Wednesday (via Reuters)

Vladimir Putin says the war in Ukraine could go on for a long time, but he saw “no sense” in mobilising additional soldiers at this point.

“As for the duration of the special military operation, well, of course, this can be a long process,” the Russian president said.

Mr Putin’s troops invaded the neighbouring country in February.

In a televised meeting of his Human Rights Council that was dominated by the war, he said Russians would “defend ourselves with all the means at our disposal”, asserting that Russia was seen in the West as “a second-class country that has no right to exist at all”.

He said the risk of nuclear war was growing – the latest in a series of such warnings – but that Russia saw its arsenal as a means to retaliate, not to strike first.

“We haven’t gone mad, we realise what nuclear weapons are,” Mr Putin said. “We have these means in more advanced and modern form than any other nuclear country ... but we aren’t about to run around the world brandishing this weapon like a razor.”

He said there was no reason for a second mobilisation at this point, after a call-up of at least 300,000 reservists in September and October.

Mr Putin said 150,000 of these were deployed in Ukraine: 77,000 in combat units and the others in defensive functions. The remaining 150,000 were still at training centres.

“Under these conditions, talk about any additional mobilisation measures simply makes no sense,” he said.

Mr Putin said Russia had already achieved a “significant result” with the acquisition of “new territories” in Ukraine – a reference to the annexation of four partly occupied regions in September that Kyiv and most members of the United Nations condemned as illegal.

He said Russia had made the Sea of Azo, bounded by Russia and Russian-occupied territory, its “internal sea”. He said that had been an aspiration of Peter the Great, the 17th- and 18th-century warrior tsar to whom Mr Putin has compared himself in the past.