Vladimir Putin has told Ukraine that it should quickly accept Moscow's terms or brace for the worst, adding that Russia has barely started its action. The war in Ukraine has been going on for five months and in this period, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian have been forced to flee the country, seeking refuge in neighbouring nations. Russia's invasion has created the worst humanitarian crisis in Europe since the Second World War, triggering global condemnation, but Mr Putin said his forces are just warming up.
"It's a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but it looks like it's heading in that direction," Sky News quoted Mr Putin as saying during a meeting with leaders of the Kremlin-controlled Parliament on Thursday.
"Everybody should know that largely speaking, we haven't even yet started anything in earnest," he further said.
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The Russian leader also accused the West of fuelling the hostilities. Mr Putin said he is ready to hold talks to end the war, but warned that the longer it "takes the harder it will be for them to make a deal with us".
Russia launched the invasion on February 24 this year after months of warning Ukraine against joining the West-backed military alliance NATO. Moscow has accused US-led western countries of trying to expand their sphere of influence by adding smaller countries like Ukraine to NATO and coming too close to the Russian borders.
The West has, however, rejected all these allegations and said every country has the option to choose whether it wants to join any grouping or not.
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a "special military operation" to demilitarise its southern neighbour and protect Russian speakers from what it calls nationalists.
Ukraine and its Western allies say this is a baseless pretext for flagrant aggression that aims to seize territory.
The fighting is now raging in Ukraine's eastern industrial hub of Donbas where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian troops since 2014.
Though Russian forces have not been able to capture Ukraine's capital Kyiv or other big cities, it has managed to gain control of the Luhansk - one of the two regions that make up Donbas.
