Russian President Vladimir Putin accused NATO members of participating in the conflict in Ukraine by supplying arms to this country and said the West wants to destroy Russia. “They are sending Ukraine tens of billions of dollars. This is real participation,” Putin said in an interview with the Rossiya-1 channel broadcast this Sunday.

“This means that take partalbeit indirectly, of the crimes committed by the regime in Kiev,” he said.

That’s what the Russian president thought Western countries have “one single goal: to dissolve the former Soviet Union and its largest part, the Russian Federation”.

“Only then can we be included in the so-called family of civilized peoples, but only separately, every part separately,” he said. Putin spoke on the sidelines of a patriotic concert held in Moscow on Thursday, the eve of the first anniversary of the start of the Russian military offensive in Kiev.

In the interview, the president reiterated his call for a multipolar world, stating that he had “no doubt” that this would eventually happen.

“Now that the attempts (by the United States) to reconfigure the world after the fall of the Soviet Union have led to this situation, we are forced to respond,” he said.

On the other hand, the Ukrainian President, Volodimir Zelensky, He promised again that his country will restore Crimea, a peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014. “Nine years ago, Russian aggression in Crimea began. By retaking Crimea, we will restore peace. It is our country and our people, our history,” Zelensky said on Telegram.

In a statement, the US State Department thanked “Ukraine’s efforts (…) to draw the world’s attention to the ongoing Russian occupation.”

“The United States does not and never will recognize the alleged Russian annexation of the peninsulahe added.

In an interview published Sunday in the newspapers of the German regional press group Funke, the number two of the Ukrainian military intelligence service Vadym Skibitsky said that Kiev was preparing a new counter-offensive for the spring.

“One of our strategic military objectives is to try to make a hole in the Russian front in the south,” he explained towards Crimea.

“We will only stop until we get our country back to its 1991 borders. This is our message to Russia and the international community,” he added.

Skibitsky also said Ukraine could bomb military bases in Russia, such as in the Belgorod border area, which is already a target.