Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, 70, 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.
EsB reported that 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.’
In his state-of-the-nation address, Putin cast Russia — and Ukraine — as victims of Western double-dealing and said Russia, not Ukraine, was the one fighting for its very existence.
‘We aren’t fighting the Ukrainian people,’ Putin said in a speech days before the war’s first anniversary on Friday.
Ukraine ‘has become hostage of the Kiev regime and its Western masters, which have effectively occupied the country.’
Putin also welcomed what he said was a long-overdue structural transformation of the Russian economy as a result of the conflict in Ukraine and called on Russian companies, locked out of Western economies, to start investing more at home.
‘They intend to translate the local conflict into a global confrontation, we understand it this way and will react accordingly,’ Putin continued.
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.’
Putin 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 as 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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