Putin stated that war in Ukraine was "started by NATO" due to unresolved issue of Donbas
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has made yet another series of cynical statements in an attempt to justify Russia’s war crimes. The Kremlin leader threatened new strikes on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, while repeating the absurd falsehood that "NATO started the war in Ukraine."
He made these remarks on Friday, June 12, during a meeting with Russian occupiers on "Russia Day," according to Russian media reports cited by Censor.NET.
Announcement of new war crimes
The Kremlin leader confirmed that Russia will continue its tactic of launching massive strikes on Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure, hypocritically calling it a "response" to successful attacks by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on oil refineries and military facilities on Russian territory.
"We must respond to them appropriately. And we are doing so, and we will intensify our strikes on the enemy’s infrastructure in order to deter them from attacking our civilian facilities. We will do this with ever-greater capabilities, which are already significant and will only increase as the Russian Federation’s defense industry grows," the war criminal threatened.
At the same time, he once again tried to assure Russians that Western sanctions were supposedly incapable of harming the Russian economy or dividing Russian society.
"Living in harmony" on the Kremlin’s terms
Immediately after threatening to destroy Ukraine’s infrastructure, Putin called on the international community to pursue peace, but exclusively through the lens of Russian ultimatums.
"I want to give everyone some advice: never go to war with Russia, don’t even try to do so. Let’s live in harmony, let’s resolve all issues through negotiations... We are ready to conduct these negotiations, but with our national interests in mind—not just for today, but with a historical perspective," the dictator declared.
At the same time, while commenting on the situation on the battlefield, Putin let slip that the actual pace of the occupying forces’ advance is far from the Russian General Staff’s desired plans: "Things are going well for us; we’re not moving as fast as we’d like, but we’re still moving forward every day."
On NATO, Donbas, and the Minsk Agreements
Seeking to absolve himself of responsibility for unleashing the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II, Putin accused NATO of attacking Ukraine.
According to him, it was NATO that started the war in Donbas in 2014, allegedly "directly attacking the southeast of the country" and "launching airstrikes on Donetsk." Moscow, he claims, spent eight years merely "trying to persuade them to reach an agreement through peaceful means," since "Russian people live there."
The dictator also complained that Western leaders and Kyiv had allegedly fooled him during the signing of the Minsk agreements:
"And then what turned out? It turned out that they came to Minsk, signed the so-called Minsk agreements, and then publicly admitted: they did it specifically to give the Kyiv regime the opportunity to rearm and start hostilities. We waited eight years for a resolution through peaceful means. Then it became clear that this was impossible, because the head of the regime said outright: ‘We won’t implement anything.’ So what? We had to defend our interests and our people by other means," the Kremlin leader concluded, justifying the full-scale invasion.
