Russia spent many years seeking a constructive dialogue with the West, and proposing an indivisible, equality-based system of joint security, but received only a “hypocritical” reaction – NATO’s expansion to Russia’s borders, and missile defense umbrellas across Europe and Asia, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.
Speaking to lawmakers during his address to the Federal Assembly on Tuesday, Putin accused the US and its allies of playing the “same double game” in the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine as they had in the years and decades prior in other countries.
“This disgusting method of deception has used many times before. [The West] behaved just as shamelessly, duplicitously, destroying Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria. They will never be able to wash themselves clean of this shame. The concepts of honor, trust, decency are foreign to them. They are used to spitting on the world, and it turned out that they treat the peoples of their own countries in the same way,” Putin said.
The Russian president recalled that as late as December 2021, Moscow “officially sent NATO drafts of an agreement on security guarantees, but received a direct refusal on all points. At that time it finally became crystal clear that the go-ahead for aggression had been given.”
The draft security agreements referred to by Putin included provisions aimed at dramatically deescalating tensions between Russia and NATO, including legally binding, written guarantees not to deploy troops, aircraft, warships and missile systems in areas where they might be seen as a threat to the national security of the other party, and a request that NATO scrap its plans to advance into Ukraine and other post-Soviet republics. The US and NATO dismissed Russia’s proposals and stressed that the Western bloc would not do away with its “open door” policy for new members.
Putin stressed that Russia was not at war with the people of Ukraine, that “the people of Ukraine are now hostages to the regime in Kiev and its Western masters,” and that their country is being used as a “tool” and a “launchpad” for a conflict against Russia, complete with foreign military bases and military biolabs on its territory.
“Even before the start of the special military operation, Kiev negotiated with the West on the supply of air defense systems, aircraft and other heavy equipment…We also remember attempts by the Kiev regime to acquire nuclear weapons. After all, they talked about it publicly,” Putin said.
Recalling the former German and French leaders’ admission that the 2015 Minsk peace deal aimed at bringing the crisis in the Donbass to an end was a mere “bluff” aimed at rearming Ukraine and preparing it for war against Russia, Putin blasted Western officials for behaving “as if they are proud of and revel in their treachery, calling the Normandy format a performance.”
“It turns out that for the whole time that the Donbass was on fire, when blood was being shed, when Russia sincerely – I would like to emphasize this – sincerely strove for a peaceful solution, they were playing with people’s lives, playing, in fact, with marked cards,” Putin said.
As far as the ongoing military operation in Ukraine is concerned, Putin said that “step by step, we will carefully and consistently solve the tasks facing us.”
“Since 2014, the people of the Donbass fought, defended their right to live on their own land, speak in their native language, fought and did not give up under blockade and constant shelling, undisguised hatred from the Kiev regime, and believed and waited for Russia to come to the rescue,” Putin said.
“I would like to reiterate this: it was [the West] that unleashed the war. And we used force and are using force to stop it,” Putin said, recalling how, in the days before Russian forces began the operation in Ukraine, Kiev had poised a massive group of forces in the Donbass in preparation “for another bloody, punitive operation” akin to the 2014-2015 assault.
Source: Sputnik news agency
