The special military operation in Ukraine is "proceeding as planned, in strict accordance with the schedule", Russia's President Vladimir Putin said today, adding that all the assigned tasks are being successfully fulfilled.

Putin further said that the peoples of Russia and Ukraine are one, and that this is a belief that he will never give up. 

"I will never give up my belief that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, even despite the fact that some of the inhabitants of Ukraine were intimidated, many were duped by Nazi nationalist propaganda, and someone deliberately, of course, followed the path of Bandera and others henchmen of the Nazis who fought on the side of Hitler during the Great Patriotic War," Putin said at a meeting with permanent members of the Russian Security Council.

As for the humanitarian situation and the evacuation of refugees, the Russian President said Moscow has established humanitarian corridors and provided transport so that civilians are given the opportunity to leave. 

He added that Ukraine's nationalists are not allowing them to do so. Rather, they are gathering residents in apartment buildings, and placing weapons on the lower and upper floors, "only the Nazis treated civilians so inhumanly", Putin asserted.

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"Nationalist and neo-Nazi formations, and among them there are foreign mercenaries, including from the Middle East, hide behind civilians as a human shield. I have already said that there is absolutely objective photographic data of how they place heavy military equipment in residential areas of cities."

The Russian President declared that the nationalists did not fulfill their promises to remove weapons from residential areas and that instead, more military equipment and vehicles are being deployed there.