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Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that peace talks with Ukraine had hit a dead end, pledging that his troops would win and goading the West for failing to bring Moscow to heel.
Addressing the war in public for the first time since Russian forces retreated from northern Ukraine after they were halted at the gates of Kyiv, Mr Putin promised that Russia would achieve all of its "noble" aims.
In the strongest signal to date that the war will grind on, he said Kyiv had derailed peace talks by staging fake claims of Russian war crimes and by demanding security guarantees to cover the whole of Ukraine.
"We have again returned to a dead-end situation for us," Mr Putin, Russia's leader since 1999, said during a visit to the Vostochny Cosmodrome 5,550 kilometres east of Moscow.
Asked by Russian space agency workers if the operation in Ukraine would achieve its goals, he said: "Absolutely. I don't have any doubt at all."
Russia will "rhythmically and calmly" continue its operation but the most important strategic conclusion was that the unipolar international order that the US had built after the Cold War was breaking up, Mr Putin said.
He said Russia had no choice but to fight because it had to defend the Russian speakers of eastern Ukraine and prevent its former Soviet neighbour from becoming an anti-Moscow springboard for enemies.
The West has condemned the war as a brutal, imperial-style land grab in a sovereign country.
Ukraine says it has been fighting for its survival since Mr Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 and on February 21 recognised two of its rebel regions as sovereign.
He dismissed the West's sanctions, which have tipped Russia towards its worst recession since the years after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, as a failure.
"That Blitzkrieg on which our foes were counting did not work," Mr Putin said. "The United States is ready to fight with Russia until the last Ukrainian. That is the way it is."
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A boy rides a bicycle past a house that was damaged by shelling in Andriivka village, not far from Kyiv. EPA -
A destroyed residential building in Mariupol, south-eastern Ukraine. Reuters -
Firefighters at work on the outskirts of Kharkiv, north-east Ukraine. EPA -
A torn Ukrainian flag in front of a ruined Mariupol apartment building. Reuters -
Residents who cleared debris after Russian shelling eat lunch outside a damaged building in Makariv, near Kyiv. EPA -
Children play with a therapeutic dog at a shelter organised by volunteers in Zaporizhzhya, Ukraine. Reuters -
A girl stands by the door of a bunker in Severodonetsk, in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region, as Russian troops intensify a campaign to take the strategic port city of Mariupol. AFP -
A firefighter at work following a missile attack near Kharkiv International Airport. Reuters -
A Ukrainian fighter walks in front of a destroyed house in Bohdanivka village, north-east of Kyiv. AFP -
Two women hug outside a heavily damaged apartment block following an artillery attack in Kharkiv. Reuters -
Ukrainian soldiers guard the village of Barvinkove, as Russia's invasion on Ukraine continues. Reuters -
Leonid Serdiuchenko, a Ukrainian commander, stands next to destroyed vehicles outside Barvinkove. Reuters -
A woman carries the portrait of Dmytro Stefienko, 32, a civilian killed during the war, during his funeral in Bucha, Ukraine. AP -
A Russian soldier collects weapons from inside the Mariupol drama theatre in Ukraine. AFP -
Relatives and friends attend the funeral of Andriy Matviychuk, 37, who served as a territorial defence soldier, who was captured and killed by the Russian army in Bucha, Ukraine. AP -
Anatoliy Morykin, 45, left, mourns the death of his mother, Valentyna Morykina, 82, who died in a retirement home in Bucha during the Russian invasion. AP -
Nadiya, 65, shows a hole in a wall of a building after shelling in Zalissya, Ukraine. EPA -
A booby trap found by locals near their home in Zalissya. EPA -
Debris of a school bus near a damaged school that was a base for Russian troops in Bohdanivka, Ukraine. EPA -
A man examines the debris of a destroyed Russian tank in Bohdanivka. EPA -
President Joe Biden speaks to the media before boarding Air Force One at Des Moines International Airport, en route to Washington. AP -
Valentina Saroyan sits in the basement of a school in Yahidne, near Chernihiv, Ukraine. AP -
Vasyl Cherepenko stands next to a mass grave at a cemetery in Yahidne, near Dnipro, Ukraine. AP -
Oksana, second from left, and Yevhen, right, talk with police officers next to their apartment building damaged by shelling in Irpin, Ukraine. AP -
Women bid farewell to relatives as they leave the Slovyansk central station in the Donbas region. AFP -
The partially destroyed Mariupol drama theatre in Ukraine, hit on March 16 by an air strike. AFP -
A man embraces his wife as she prepares to board a train at Slovyansk central station in the Donbas region. AFP -
A woman walks through a damaged apartment building after a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine. AP -
A missile pierces the road in front of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration building amid Russia's attack on Ukraine. Reuters -
A boy walks by unexploded Russian shells in the village of Andriyivka close to Kyiv, Ukraine. AP -
Ukrainian tanks move down a street in Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv. AP -
A man walks past a storage place for burned armed vehicles and cars, on the outskirts of Kyiv. AP -
Local residents stand on top of a Russian tank on the outskirts of Kyiv. AP -
Ukrainian families, who have fled Kherson amid the Russian invasion, watch a dolphin show at a hotel in Odesa, Ukraine. Reuters -
Residents stand outside their apartments as shops burn after a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine. AP -
Irina Szymanska holds her baby in a temporary shelter at the central train station for displaced people heading to Poland in Lviv, Ukraine. Getty Images -
A man walks in his yard, damaged by shelling, in the village of Andriivka, Ukraine. EPA -
Sixty-two-year-old Luba hugs a Ukrainian servicewoman in Andriivka. EPA -
A woman washes clothes in the yard of a ruined house in Andriivka. EPA -
Russian soldiers patrol a street in Volnovakha, in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic. The picture was taken during a trip organised by the Russian military. AFP -
Russian mine clearers search for explosive objects in a building the Russian authorities say was damaged by Ukrainian shelling. AFP -
A woman reads a book as residents find shelter from shelling in a metro station in Kharkiv. Reuters -
Firefighters try to contain a fire at a plant in Kharkiv following Russian shelling. Reuters -
Farm owner Zlobina Lubov tends to her animals in the village of Malaya Rohan, Ukraine. Reuters -
A bathtub is seen inside a building that was heavily damaged by shelling in Kharkiv. Reuters -
A man looks out of his window, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Borodianka. Reuters -
Soldiers 'came to my house and said go to the basement' Zinaida Makishaiva, 82, said, before they started to shoot around her. 'God saved my life,' she said. Reuters -
A mother waits for police officers to exhume the body of her son from a well at a fuel station in Buzova, Kyiv region. According to the head of the village, he was killed by Russian soldiers. Reuters
Mr Putin, who had been all over Russian TV in the early days of the war, largely retreated from public view since Moscow's withdrawal from northern Ukraine two weeks ago.
His only public appearance in the past week was at the funeral of a nationalist politician, where he did not directly address the war.
On Monday he met the visiting Austrian Chancellor, Karl Nehammer, at a country residence outside Moscow but no images of that meeting were released.
Mr Putin dismissed Ukrainian and western claims that Russia had committed war crimes as fakes.
Since Russian troops withdrew from towns and villages around the capital Kyiv, Ukrainian troops have been showing what they say were corpses of civilians killed by Russian forces, as well as destroyed houses and burnt-out cars.
Ukraine says Russia is guilty of genocide and US President Joe Biden has accused Putin of war crimes and called for a trial.
Mr Putin said he had told western leaders to think about the destruction by the US of the Syrian city of Raqqa, the former de facto capital of ISIS, and in Afghanistan.
"Have you seen how this Syrian city was turned to rubble by American aircraft? Corpses lay in the ruins for months decomposing," he said. "Nobody cared. No one even noticed."
"There was no such silence when provocations were staged in Syria, when they portrayed the use of chemical weapons by the Assad government. Then it turned out that it was fake. It's the same kind of fake in Bucha."
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has found that poison gas was used repeatedly in Syria, including in Ghouta, an opposition-held suburb of Damascus.
Russia has objected to those findings, which implicated its ally, Syrian president Bashar Al Assad.
Washington and its allies have denied targeting civilians in the 2017 air strikes on Raqqa, a Syrian city that had become the headquarters of ISIS, which the US-led coalition was fighting.
Mr Putin, who says Ukraine and Russia are essentially one people, describes the war as an inevitable confrontation with the US, which he accuses of threatening Russia by meddling in its backyard.
Sixty-one years to the day since the Soviet Union's Yuri Gagarin blasted off to become the first man in space, Mr Putin drew an analogy between Soviet space successes and Russia's defiance today.
"The sanctions were total, the isolation was complete, but the Soviet Union was still first in space," he said.
"We don't intend to be isolated. It is impossible to severely isolate anyone in the modern world, especially such a vast country as Russia."
