Vladimir Putin warns that Ukraine’s entry into NATO may lead to war between Russia and the Alliance for the control of Crimea. “Let’s imagine that Ukraine, as a NATO country, initiates this military operation. What do we do? Do we fight with NATO? Has anyone thought of that? It seems not,” the Russian president said on Tuesday.
He did so during the joint press conference he offered in the Kremlin after meeting with the Hungarian Prime Minister, Víktor Orbán. Putin, who ordered the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014has now pointed out that Ukraine’s military doctrine includes “taking back Crimeaincluding by military means”. “It is not something that they say in public, it is that it is written in their documents”, he stated.
In addition, the Russian leader has stressed that NATO does not have to accept Ukraine in its midst and has accused the United States of using its neighbor as an “instrument” to “contain the development of Russia”: “Drag us into an armed conflict and impose the toughest sanctions with the help of your allies in Europe. Or drag Ukraine into NATO, place offensive weapons there and encourage the ultra-nationalists to settle the Donbas and Crimea issue militarily, in such a way that they would also push us into an armed conflict”, he has sentenced.
“If one wants to avoid such a negative development of events – and we want to do it – we must really take into account the interests of all countriesincluding Russia, and find a variant to solve this problem,” he warned.
In this sense, Putin has once again accused Western leaders of renege on its promise not to enlarge NATO “not an inch” to the east of Europe and has reproached the US and the Alliance they have ignored the main Russian concerns on security: “We are carefully analyzing the written response from the US and NATO. But now it is clear that thehe main Russian concerns have been ignored“, he stated.
Johnson warns Putin: Invading Ukraine would be ‘a disaster’
These statements by Putin come on a day marked by a intense diplomatic activity, in which the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, spoke by telephone with the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov. A conversation in which Blinken has urged Moscow to initiate an “immediate de-escalation” and “withdraw troops and equipment from the borders of Ukraine.”
For his part, the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnsonhas met in Kiev with the Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, and from there has warned that the Russian invasion of Ukraine would be a “political, humanitarian and military disaster for Russia and the world“.
The ‘premier’, which has accused Putin of “putting a gun to Ukraine’s head” to “redraw the map of European security”, he plans to speak with the Russian leader on his return to London. In turn, the Kremlin is already preparing a face-to-face meeting between Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron for next week.
Source: Lasexta
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