‘No need for talks with Joe Biden’: Vladimir Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the CICA event at Kazakhstan’s capital Astana. It was the sixth CICA event. After attending the summit Putin spoke tot he reporters on various topics, including NATO, Joe Biden, and whether he is willing to join the G20 summit or not. The Russian President said that he saw “no need” for talks with US President Joe Biden.
He further added that he has not yet taken any decision on attending a Group of 20 summits in Bali, Indonesia next month, and a direct clash of NATO troops with Russia would lead to a “global catastrophe.” President Putin says he expects a call-up of army reservists he ordered to supplement his country’s troops in Ukraine to reach the target number of recruits in two weeks, allowing him to end the hugely unpopular call-up. Following a summit in Kazakhstan, he announced that 222,000 of the 300,000 reservists set as a goal had been mobilised. According to him, 33,000 of them are already in military units, and 16,000 are engaged in combat.
The call-up, which Putin announced in September as his forces lost occupied territory to a Ukrainian counteroffensive, has sparked public outrage in Russia, where nearly all men under the age of 65 are registered as reservists.
Simultaneously, Russian nationalists have criticised the Kremlin’s handling of the war, putting more pressure on Putin to do more to turn the tide in Russia’s favour. Despite Putin and other top officials claiming that the mobilisation would affect 300,000 people, the presidential decree authorising the draught did not specify a figure.
