Putin says full-scale invasion is launched late because of his hopes to reach agreement within Minsk accords

Russian President Vladimir Putin said this after arriving in Bishkek for a Eurasian Economic Union summit.

According to Putin, the full-scale military operation in Ukraine should have been started earlier, but he expected to resolve the situation peacefully.

“Obviously, we got our bearings late, to be honest. Maybe we should have started all this earlier. We just expected that we would be able to come to an agreement within the framework of the Minsk peace accords,” the Russian president said.

However, he noted that it will still be necessary to talk, since Russia is ready for negotiations. However, after Merkel's statement, “it is not clear how to negotiate, with whom and what the guarantees will be.”

• On June 8, former Chancellor Angela Merkel said that in 2008 she opposed Ukraine's accession to NATO in order not to provoke Vladimir Putin.

• On December 7, Merkel said that Ukraine was not ready to join NATO in 2008, and the Minsk agreements in 2014 gave Kyiv time to become stronger.