Xi arrived in Moscow for talks

Putin: In 2014, Russia was not yet ready for war

According to Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin, Russia was not prepared for a major war against Ukraine after annexing the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014. “We didn’t have hypersonic weapons then, but now we have them,” Putin said in an interview with Russian state television published on Sunday. So far, Russia has occasionally used the hypersonic weapons. “There are also other modern systems, there was nothing comparable in 2014,” he said, again claiming that Russia wanted to resolve the conflict over Ukraine peacefully at the time.

“We have a lot to do – for example to develop the ground forces,” Putin said when asked about the lessons of the war he began on February 24, 2022 against Ukraine. He also commented on the question of whether the “military special operation” should not have started earlier because Ukraine did not yet have such weapons: Putin made it clear that in 2014 Russia was taking “bigger actions” than when it annexed the Crimea was not ready.

At the same time, Putin accused the government in Kiev and the West of having worked on upgrading Ukraine after the annexation of Crimea and the start of hostilities in Donbass nine years ago. He accused the former mediators Germany and France of deception in the wake of Minsk’s peace plans for the Donbass last year. Western partners “just pumped weapons into Ukraine and prepared it for combat.”

The president also justified the invasion of Ukraine by wanting to forestall a strike by the Ukrainian armed forces against the Donbass. Moscow had accused the Ukrainian armed forces of waging war against their own people in the Donbass. Accordingly, the rights of the Russian-speaking population should be protected. Kiev, in turn, accuses Russia of “genocide against the Ukrainians,” including kidnapping and re-educating children. Russia’s aim is to completely destroy the independent and sovereign state of Ukraine.


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