German Chancellor Olaf ScholzBERLIN, Mar 4German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, he did not receive promises that a military special operation in Ukraine would not take place. «I do not reveal a secret, I will repeat what I said immediately after the end of a long conversation with President Putin at a joint press conference. I made it clear that there was no such statement that this would not happen,» Scholz said, answering the presenter's question whether the chancellor believes that the Russian president deceived him, violating what was allegedly given during promise on Ukraine. «Nobody received statements that this would not happen,» Scholz said. Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine early on Thursday morning, February 24. President Vladimir Putin called its goal «the protection of people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.» For this, according to him, it is planned to carry out «demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine», to bring to justice all war criminals responsible for «bloody crimes against civilians» in Donbass. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces strike only at military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops, the civilian population is not in danger. With the support of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the DPR and LPR groups are developing an offensive. But there is no question of the occupation of Ukraine, the President of Russia emphasized. On the morning of March 3, more than 1.6 thousand objects were hit, 62 aircraft, 606 tanks and other armored vehicles were destroyed, and so on. The territory around the Chernobyl (mothballed) and Zaporozhye (operating) nuclear power plants was taken under control. Eight years later, the North Crimean Canal was unblocked, work is underway to restore water supply to the Crimea. The offensive is going on in several directions, Kyiv is blocked from the west. A detailed map of the regions of Ukraine in which the Russian military operates, however, has not yet been officially published. The RF Armed Forces achieved air supremacy over the whole of Ukraine. According to the RF Ministry of Defense, as of March 2, 498 Russian servicemen were killed and 1,597 wounded during the operation. Among the Ukrainian side, according to the Russian military department, the losses are many times higher: more than 2,870 killed and about 3,700 wounded. The Russian Ministry of Defense reports a number of cases of voluntary laying down of arms by Ukrainian troops — they are guaranteed safety and return to their families. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian security forces are deploying multiple rocket launchers right in the residential areas of Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. Putin called this a terrorist tactic.
