Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the members of The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), suggesting that they are getting directly involved in the Ukraine conflict by supplying arms to the country. Putin said that the West planned to break up Russia.
In an interview with the Rossiya-1 channel aired on Sunday, the Russian president said that the West is sending tens of billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine, which is “participation”.
Putin said, “This means that they are taking part, albeit indirectly, in the crimes being carried out by the Kyiv regime.”
Putin also accused the West of attempting to “dismember” Russia, with an aim to turn the nation into a series of mini-states—weaker in strength.
Putin said in the interview that the US and other NATO allies wanted to “inflict a strategic defeat on us [Russia]” and also to “make our people suffer”. Putin added: “How can we ignore their nuclear capabilities in these conditions?”
Putin spoke on the sidelines of a patriotic concert in Moscow, which was on Thursday on the eve of the first anniversary of the start of Russia’s full-scale offensive in Ukraine.
He said, “What are we against? Against the fact that this new world that is taking shape is being built only in the interests of just one country, the United States.”
Putin added, “Now that their attempts to re-configure the world in their own likeness after the fall of the Soviet Union have led to this situation, we are obliged to react.”
US reiterates China mulling arms for Russia
Meanwhile, the United States claimed that it is “confident” that China is mulling over sending lethal equipment to support the Russian forces in the Ukraine war.
The CIA director William Burns said that such a move by Beijing would be “a very risky and unwise bet,” the intelligence chief said in an interview aired Sunday on CBS.
(With inputs from agencies)
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