Russian President Vladimir Putin stated on Tuesday that the Ukrainian people have become “hostages” to Western interests, accusing the West of inciting Russophobia.
“The Ukrainian people became hostages of the coup d’état and the criminal regime of its Western masters that had developed on its basis, a bargaining chip in the implementation of their cruel, selfish plans,” Putin said at the Victory Day parade in Moscow, commemorating the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.
The 2014 Maidan protests in Ukraine, which Moscow claims were orchestrated by the West, resulted in the overthrow of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.
In February of last year, Moscow launched a “special military operation” in Ukraine to “demilitarize and denazify” the country. For Western countries, though, it is a war of aggression, and they have retaliated with harsh penalties.
Putin argued that “exorbitant ambitions, arrogance, and permissiveness” had resulted in a “tragedy,” which he blamed for “the current catastrophe in Ukraine.”
He claimed that the West “still talks about its exclusivity, pits people and splits society, provokes bloody conflicts and coups, sows hatred, Russophobia, aggressive nationalism, and destroys family and traditional values that make a person human.”
The Russian leader stated that the West’s attitude is “to continue to dictate, to impose their will, rights, and rules on the peoples – in essence, a system of robbery, violence, and suppression.”
“Their goal is to disintegrate and destroy our country, to erase the outcomes of World War II, to finally break the system of global security and international law, and to strangle any sovereign centers of development,” he asserted.