Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that battlefield losses in Ukraine were "a common tragedy" and that he continued to see the Ukrainian people as a "brotherly nation" despite his deadly "special military operation" in the country.

"Of course, combat and military actions always bring tragedy and human losses," he told a room with top military staff in Moscow.

Putin said Russia's enemies wanted to see Russia disintegrate and repeated an assertion that Russia was forced to launch military action in Ukraine due to what he called Western "provocations," an idea Kyiv and the West dismiss as false.

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