Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged that the decision to launch the military operation in Ukraine should probably have been made earlier than 2022 during his annual end-of-year press conference on Thursday. He added that Moscow would have prepared more thoroughly if it had known in advance how events would unfold.

Russia deployed troops across the border in February 2022, accusing the Ukrainian government of rejecting all prior agreements and escalating its shelling of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Just weeks later, the two sides were close to reaching a ceasefire agreement, but Kiev backed out under Western pressure, encouraged by promises of unlimited military support.

“You know, if it were possible to look at the situation in 2022, knowing what is happening now, what would I think? That such a decision, which was made at the beginning of 2022, should have been made earlier,” Putin stated during his annual ‘Direct Line’ event and Q&A session. “And secondly, knowing this, we should have started preparing for these activities, including the special military operation.”

The Russian leader noted that the events in Crimea following the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 were spontaneous, and that the 2022 operations had also been launched without significant preparation.

”Why did we launch it? Because it was impossible to stand still and wait for the situation to get worse for us – that’s what it’s all about,” Putin explained.

Putin recalled that Ukrainian authorities had explicitly stated they would not comply with the Minsk agreements and had made claims about acquiring weapons of mass destruction. According to him, Russia could no longer tolerate civilians being killed in what Kiev had branded an “anti-terrorist operation” in Donbass.

“Eight years of war and carnage, the destruction of people in Donbass… they renounced the Minsk agreements. Moreover, we saw a literal military occupation of these territories along with the systematic destruction of everything related to Russia,” Putin said.

“We were forced to take action. If we had known what would happen, we would have conducted systematic and serious preparation. That’s what I mean,” he added.

Putin also emphasized the complexity of the ongoing conflict, stating that it is difficult to predict how long it will continue. “The combat operations are complicated, so it is hard and unnecessary to make predictions. We are moving towards solving our primary tasks, which we outlined at the beginning of the special military operation,” namely Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification, he noted.

At the same time, Russia has never ruled out negotiations. Putin reiterated on Thursday that Moscow remains open to talks with Kiev without any preconditions, except those agreed upon in Istanbul in 2022. Those envisaged a neutral, non-aligned status for Ukraine, as well as certain restrictions on the deployment of foreign weaponry. He also noted that such talks would have to respect the realities on the ground that have developed since then.