Moscow (EFE) .- Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the West today of wanting to deal Russia a “strategic defeat” in Ukraine and put an end to it “once and for all”.
“What does this mean? What is that to us? It means they want to finish us off once and for all,” Putin said during his state of the nation address to both houses of Parliament.
Putin, who had not addressed Parliament since April 2021, warned that in that case “the very existence” of the Russian Federation would be in danger.
He also lashed out at Western powers for wanting to turn a local conflict into a “global confrontation” and warned that Russia’s defeat on the battlefield “is impossible.”
“One thing must be clear to everyone: the greater the range of the weapons supplied to Ukraine, the more we will be forced to move the threat away from our borders,” he said.
The Russian leader denounced that “the West uses Ukraine as a polygon, as a battering ram against Russia” and recalled that, even before the start, almost a year ago. of the Russian military campaign, kyiv was already negotiating with its sponsors for the supply of weapons.
“Responsibility for the outbreak of the Ukrainian conflict, for the escalation, for the increase in the number of victims falls entirely on the Western elites and, of course, on the current Kiev regime,” he stressed.