Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that his country’s true enemy is the West, not Ukraine itself.
Putin said during a meeting at a military hospital near Moscow:
“The point is not that they help our enemy, but they are our enemy, they solve their issues with their (Ukraine’s) hands.”
The president said that this has been the case “for centuries” and continues to this day. He also stressed that for Russia the enemy is not Ukraine itself, but those who intend to “destroy Russian statehood” and inflict a “strategic defeat” on Moscow on the front line. Putin said:
“There are people who sympathize with us, but there are so-called (Western) elites for whom the existence of Russia, at least in its current quality, in its current size, as they think, is unacceptable.”
The Russian president then said that Western countries had been “nurturing” Ukraine for a long time to create the conflict that is taking place today. He noted:
“Unfortunately for us, they achieved, created this conflict and are trying to solve their task with the help of Ukrainians, namely the task of fighting Russia.”
Commenting on Ukraine’s recent strike on the Russian city of Belgorod that killed 25 people, Putin said that Russia should not retaliate against civilian population centres in Ukraine despite the fact that “everything is boiling inside”.
He said Russia would not leave “any crime of this kind unpunished” and called the strike, which took place on Saturday, a “terrorist attack.” Ukraine’s armed forces are doing this to intimidate Russia and create uncertainty in the country, Putin said, adding:
“But we, for our part, will increase the blows that I said.”
He went on to say that Russia wants to end the conflict “as quickly as possible” and “only on our terms.”
