putin said at a meeting with an African delegation that he wanted to limit the size of the Armed Forces

During a meeting with the leaders of seven African countries dedicated to ending russia's war against Ukraine, russian dictator vladimir putin said that russia is "ready to consider any African proposals for a settlement."

Source. This was reported by The Insider with reference to the russian media.

According to putin, russia has allegedly never refused to negotiate with Ukraine, but for some reason the Ukrainian authorities refused to negotiate.

"It was not us, but the Ukrainian leadership that announced that it would not conduct any negotiations. Moreover, the current president of Ukraine has signed a decree prohibiting these negotiations. So I understand your concern, I share it, and we are certainly ready to consider any of your proposals, but we did not refuse to negotiate. It was the Ukrainian side that refused. They even issued a decree. Well, what do they want from us?" the kremlin dictator does not understand.

He showed a document that he claims was prepared in March 2022 in Istanbul. According to putin, it contained provisions on Ukraine's neutrality and security guarantees.

The sheet that putin showed to the cameras shows the restrictions that, according to this document, would be imposed on the number of the Armed Forces – a number of 85,000.

He also said that "after the withdrawal of russian troops from the northern regions of Ukraine," Kyiv "threw this document into the dustbin of history," despite the fact that it had allegedly agreed on the agreement before.

In addition, putin said that the russian authorities had legally taken out Ukrainian children to "save their lives and health" and allegedly "never opposed" reunification with their families.

The russian president also said that the grain deal "has no chance".

On April 4, 31 children were returned to Ukraine from the russian-occupied Crimea. It was assumed that 33 children would return home, but the woman who was supposed to take two of them died after a "14-hour interrogation by the FSB."

The children said they were forced to do exercises to the russian national anthem and sing the song " Forward, russia". Before they were allowed to go home, they were interviewed and told not to say anything bad about their stay in Crimea.

Background. As a reminder, The Guardian published an investigation into how russians deport Ukrainian children to russia to make money off them.