Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday February 21, vowed to continue with his country’s year-long war in Ukraine and accused the U.S-led NATO alliance of starting the conflict with the belief that it could defeat Moscow in a global confrontation.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 2022 claiming it wanted to rid the Volodomir Zelensky regime of neo-nazis, a claim Ukraine and the West has rejected.
The West and Ukraine say NATO’s expansion eastwards is no justification for what ‘’an imperial-style land grab by Russia which is doomed to fail.”
Putin, 70, on the other hand, says Russia is locked in an ‘’existential battle with an arrogant West which wants to carve up Russia and steal its vast natural resources.”
Flanked by four Russian tricolour flags, Putin told Russia’s political and military elite on Tuesday, February 21 that Russia would “carefully and consistently resolve the tasks facing us.”
Putin said Russia had done everything it could to avoid war, but that Western-backed Ukraine had been planning to attack Russian-controlled Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014.
The West, Putin said, had let the genie out of the bottle in a host of regions of across the world by sowing chaos and war.
“The people of Ukraine have become the hostage of the Kyiv regime and its Western overlords, who have effectively occupied this country in the political, military and economic sense,” Putin said.
“They intend to translate the local conflict into a global confrontation, we understand it this way and will react accordingly,” Putin said.
Defeating Russia, he said, was impossible, adding that his country would never yield to Western attempts to divide its society, as a ‘majority of Russians supported the war.’
He asked the audience, which included lawmakers, soldiers, spy chiefs and state company bosses, to stand to remember those who had lost their lives in the war. He promised a special fund for the families of those killed in the war.
His speech comes after US president Joe Biden visited Kyiv on Monday ahead of the one year anniversary of the Russian invasion.
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