Dmitry Peshkov, in his first interview with the Western media, also said that Russia hoped that “this operation” would achieve its goals “in the coming days.” He told Sky News’ Mark Austin that “we live in a day of lies and lies” and that verified photos and satellite images of dead civilians on the streets of Ukrainian cities were “boldly false”. “We deny that the Russian military has anything in common with these atrocities and that corpses have appeared on the streets of Bukha,” he told Sky News. Maintaining the whole situation in Bukha, where the photos show many murdered Ukrainian civilians, was a “well-directed allusion, nothing more.” Image: Dmitry Peshkov spoke to Sky News in his first interview since the start of the war “We live in days of lies and lies” Asked to reveal how many civilians have been killed since the start of the war on February 24, Mr Peshkov said he did not want to answer, as the numbers had not been “double confirmed”. Peshkov went on to insist that it was not a war, but a “special military operation” that was necessary because, he said, Ukraine has been an “anti-Russian center” since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea. He admitted: “We have significant troop losses and it is a huge tragedy for us.” However, he claimed that Russia had withdrawn from the Ukrainian territories of Kiev and Chernihiv as an act of “goodwill”. “It was an act of goodwill to remove the tension from these areas and to show that Russia is really ready to create comfortable conditions to continue the negotiations,” he said. The Pentagon announced Wednesday that Russian forces had withdrawn completely from the capital and Chernihiv, a city in the north, for the past 24 hours. However, US authorities have warned that the Russians may have dropped mines and are still assessing the damage to both people and infrastructure. Use the Chrome browser for a more accessible video player 0:42 Putin’s spokesman: Hospital bombing was ‘fake’ The bombing at the Mariupol hospital was “fake” In Mariupol, in the Donetsk region, which Russia claims is its own, Mr Peshkov said he would “liberate himself from the nationalist battalions – hopefully sooner rather than later”. The southeastern city has been besieged by Russian troops since the beginning of the war, with thousands remaining sheltered in basements without food, water or electricity. Peshkov said Mariupol was part of the “Luhansk People’s Republic” which Russia recognizes as a separate state and claimed that troops were there “to help those people who have suffered for eight years from the heavy bombardment by Ukraine”. On March 9, the Russian Air Force bombed a maternity hospital in Mariupol, killing at least four people and wounding at least 16, and killing at least one. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described it as a war crime, but Peshkov said it was “fake”. “We have very serious reasons to believe it was fake and we insist on it,” he said.
