Putin says any peace deal on Ukraine must ensure Russia's security

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia should choose a peace in Ukraine that will ensure the long-term security of Russia and its sustainable development. 

"We must choose for ourselves a peace option that will suit us and that will ensure peace for our country in the long term," Putin told women who have lost relatives in the war. 

"We don't need anything else's, but we won't give up our own," Putin said. Putin, asked by a mother of a fallen soldier if Russia would retreat, said that Russia did not intend to do that. 

Putin on Macron

 

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking a day after French President Emmanuel Macron called Russia a threat to Europe and raised the idea of putting other European countries under France's nuclear umbrella, said on Thursday that some people had forgotten what happened to Napoleon.

 

Putin was referring to the French emperor who marched his army across Russia and into Moscow in 1812 but was then forced into a desperate winter retreat with massive loss of life.

 

"There are still people who want to go back to the times of Napoleon, forgetting how it ended," Putin said in televised comments, without mentioning Macron by name.