President Vladimir Putin has vowed to continue with Russia’s year-long war in Ukraine and accused the U.S.-led NATO alliance of fanning the flames of the conflict in the mistaken belief that it could defeat Moscow.
Flanked by four Russian tricolour flags, Putin told Russia’s political and military elite that Russia would “carefully and consistently resolve the tasks facing us.”
Putin said Russia had done everything it could to avoid war, but that Western-backed Ukraine had been planning to attack Russian-controlled Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014.
The West, Putin said, had let the genie out of the bottle in a host of regions of across the world by sowing chaos and war.
“The people of Ukraine have become the hostage of the Kyiv regime and its Western overlords, who have effectively occupied this country in the political, military and economic sense,” Putin said.
