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BBC News (19 December 2024)

Tom Bennett

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Russia should have launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine earlier and been better prepared for the war.

In his end-of-year press conference on Thursday, Putin said, with hindsight, there should have been "systemic preparation" for the 2022 invasion, which he refers to as a "special military operation". 

Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and pro-Russian forces began a conflict in eastern Ukraine, but it was eight years later that Putin tried to seize Kyiv.

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