Vladimir Putin, president of Russia in an address to the nation on Tuesday on his new plans for the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war ahead of the one year anniversary said the West and Ukraine should be blamed for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
He blamed the West for provoking the war and escalating it, saying the US and its allies sought ‘limitless power’.
“The responsibility for starting the conflict, for growing number of victims lies totally with the West and with Kyiv regime”
“This regime isn’t serving their national interest, they are serving the interest of foreign powers,” Putin said.
He accused the West of using Ukraine as a front to fight Russia and also dominate Ukraine in every aspect of her national lives.
“Today it’s the same idea to direct aggression to the East to start a war in Europe using other people’s tools. And we said we aren’t fighting in Ukraine, the Ukrainian people have become hostages of their western masters who occupied the country in a political, economic and military sense.”
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“For decades they were destroying Ukrainian industry, robbing the country and as a consequence of this it became poverty and social division grew and this waste material for action. This is a sad reality but this is a fact,” Putin said.
Putin further said that he’s aware that the West wants to give more military aid to Ukraine in strengthening them in the war. He said if they do it the reaction of Russia will be more severe as they will now move forcefully into Ukrainian space instead of just staying at Ukraine’s border to fight.
“I won’t talk about the plans of western powers to increase military aid everyone knows about this, but one thing is clear to everyone the greater the range of this systems the further away we will be forced to move the threat away from our borders”
According to Putin, the war with Ukraine is a local conflict and the West is deliberately trying to exaggerate and expand it to a global level using Ukraine as a decoy.
“The elite of the West are not hiding their goals, they want to turn a local conflict into a global conflict. This is how we understand it and we will react in an appropriate way. They have to take into account that it is impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield,” Putin said.
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