Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused NATO members of attempting to destroy the Russian Federation, since they are taking part in the Ukraine conflict by donating arms to the country.
‘They are sending tens of billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine. This really is participation,’ Putin said in an interview with the Rossiya-1 channel aired on Sunday, February 26.
‘This means that they are taking part, albeit indirectly, in the crimes being carried out by the Kyiv regime,’ Putin said.
Russia following Putin’s orders invaded Ukraine a year ago hoping to dismantle the Kyiv regime led by Volodimir Zelenskyy but has faced so many battlefield losses since coupled with sanctions from the West.
Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported that in an interview with Rossiya 1 on Sunday, Putin said the West has ‘one goal – to break up the former Soviet Union and its main part – the Russian Federation.’
And then, perhaps, they will accept us in the so-called family of civilized peoples, but only separately, each part separately. For what?” Putin said.
In comments to another channel, Putin said that Russia needs to consider NATO’s nuclear capabilities.
‘In today’s conditions, when all the leading NATO countries have declared their main goal as inflicting a strategic defeat on us, so that our people suffer as they say, how can we ignore their nuclear capabilities in these conditions?’ Putin told Rossiya 1, according to KYIV Post.
Putin has frequently stressed the importance of modernizing Russia’s nuclear forces. The Russian president remarks build on his state of the union speech earlier in the week.
‘The US and NATO openly state that their goal is the strategic defeat of Russia,’ he said.
‘And what, after that are we just supposed to let them to travel around our (nuclear) facilities?’, he said.
