International
Ukraine: Putin Accuses US Of Trying To Draw Russia Into War
- Tension is high over a Russian troop build-up close to Ukraine’s borders
EKO HOT BLOG reports that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has accused the US of trying to draw his country into a war in Ukraine.
In his first significant comments on the crisis in several weeks, he said America’s goal was to use a confrontation as a pretext to impose more sanctions on Russia.
He also said the US was ignoring Russia’s concerns about NATO alliance forces in Europe.
Read also: Ukraine Seige: US, Russia Clash At UN Security Council Meeting
Tension is high over a Russian troop build-up close to Ukraine’s borders.
Russia has in recent weeks moved about 100,000 troops – equipped with everything from tanks and artillery to ammunition and air power – to Ukraine’s border.
But Russia denies Western accusations that it is planning an invasion, nearly eight years after it annexed Ukraine’s southern Crimea peninsula and backed a bloody rebellion in the eastern Donbas region.
Moscow in turn accuses the Ukrainian government of failing to implement an international deal to restore peace to the east, where at least 14,000 people have been killed and Russian-backed rebels control swathes of territory.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Tuesday that a Russian invasion would “not be a war between Ukraine and Russia – this would be a war in Europe, a full-scale one”.
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Speaking after talks with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Moscow, Putin said: “It seems to me that the United States is not so much concerned about the security of Ukraine… but its main task is to contain Russia’s development. In this sense Ukraine itself is just a tool to reach this goal.”
Rivalry between Russia and the US, which still possess the world’s biggest nuclear arsenals, dates back to the Cold War (1947-89). Ukraine was then a crucial part of the communist Soviet Union, second only to Russia.
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