‘Inevitable’: Vladimir Putin defends missile strikes on Ukraine’s infrastructure

A German government spokesperson on Friday confirmed that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his German counterpart Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently had a conversation over the phone. meanwhile Kremlin informed that President Putin defended the Russian strikes on Ukraine's infrastructure as ‘inevitable’. 

Putin is known to have further stated that the Western line on Ukraine was "destructive" and urged Berlin to rethink its approach. "Attention was drawn to the destructive line of Western states, including Germany, which are pumping the Kyiv regime with weapons and training the Ukrainian military," the Kremlin said.

Kremiln informed that Putin said Russia's missile strikes on targets in Ukraine  could not have been avoided. In his phone conversation with Chancellor Scholz, Putin said Russia should be allowed to participate in investigations into what it called the "terrorist" attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea.

"Such measures have become a forced and inevitable response to Kyiv's provocative attacks on Russia's civilian infrastructure," the Kremlin said in a statement following the telephone talks, the first between Putin and Scholz since mid-September.

"Attention was drawn to the destructive line of Western states, including Germany, that are pumping the Kyiv regime with weapons, and are training the Ukrainian military," the Kremlin added.

Meanwhile the German Spokesperson also informed that Chancellor Scholz had condemned Russian airstrikes on civil infrastructure in Ukraine during the one-hour phone call between the two heads of the countries.

The conversation took place a day after US President Joe Biden met France's Emmanuel Macron in the White House, and Biden said he was willing to talk to Putin if the Kremlin chief demonstrated he was interested in ending the war.

The Kremlin said earlier on Friday that it wanted a diplomatic solution and Putin had always been open to talks, but this was complicated by Washington's refusal to recognise the Russian annexation of Ukrainian territories.