Vladimir Putin has taunted Western leaders in his first public appearance in over a week and repeated false claims that evidence of war crimes in Ukraine was fake.
Speaking at the Vostochny Cosmodrome - 3,500 miles east of Moscow - alongside Belarusian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko, the Russian President also signalled he has no intention of bringing the war to an end any time soon.
He dismissed the impact of devastating sanctions imposed on Moscow by Western countries, which has sparked warnings Russia is heading for its worst economic recession since the end of the Cold War.
"That Blitzkrieg on which our foes were counting did not work," he said. "The United States is ready to fight with Russia until the last Ukrainian - that is the way it is."
Continuing to taunt the West, he said that inflation and rising food and petrol prices in Western countries would start to put pressure on politicians there.
Watch: Putin defends 'noble' aims of Ukraine invasion
Addressing the war in public for the first time since his troops were pushed back from Kyiv, Putin insisted he had no doubt Russia would achieve its “noble aims”.
He accused Kyiv of derailing peace talks by staging what he said were fake claims of Russian war crimes and by demanding security guarantees to cover the whole of Ukraine.
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