Putin: Russia is ready to end the conflict with Ukraine

 The Russian president has said that Moscow is ready to end the war with Kiev peacefully, but there are no signs that Ukraine wants peace. According to the Tass news agency, the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, said in a television program that Moscow is ready to talk with Kiev to end the conflict with Ukraine and added that, if it were not for the intervention of Western countries in the war in Ukraine, the war would it would have ended 18 months ago, but Kiev did not want such a thing. On February 21, 2022, the President of Russia officially recognized the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics in the Donbas region, criticizing the behavior of the West for not taking Moscow's security concerns into account. Three days later (February 24, 2022), Vladimir Putin launched a special military operation against Ukraine. The war in Ukraine, with its huge political, military, economic, social and even cultural consequences, is in its 24th month, and the West is still sending arms aid to the Kiev government. Russian officials and some Western experts and media have called the war in Ukraine a proxy war between the Western bloc and Russia.