Published 26 February 2023 at 13.38
Foreign. One year into the war against Ukraine, Russia still lacks significant success in the conflict. Trying to explain the invasion, Russia's president says the war was necessary to prevent Western powers from using Ukraine to invade and dismember Russia.
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On on Sunday, Vladimir Putin commented on the war in an interview with the state-run Russian television channel Rossiya-1, writes Reuters.
In the interview, he described Russia as defending itself from the threat posed by the alleged build-up of a hostile Ukraine against the country, and that the war was needed to save Russia from an existential threat.
According to Vladimir Putin, the US has a plan to cut Russia into several parts and use the country's natural resources and raw materials. When this plan is implemented, it will lead to ethnic cleansing against Russians in Russia, according to Putin.
However, what intelligence he based this claim on was not specified.
He also admitted that the war had dangerous and that it is not possible to ignore the nuclear weapons capacity of the NATO countries that want to “strategically defeat us so that our people suffer”.