Vladimir Putin just made another strange claim about the war in Ukraine and the West at a board meeting today.
According to the Russian News Agency TASS, the Russian president – who is no stranger to making outlandish allegations about the international community – claimed the US is hyping up the “Russia threat”.
Putin reportedly said the US was “very much worried about close ties between Russia and Europe” as “they need to be the masters of the situation there”.
He also claimed the US “unleashed a war” in Ukraine in 2014.
That’s actually the year Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, months after Ukrainians started to protest against closer ties with Moscow.
The annexation is seen by many Ukrainians as the start of the war against Russia, although the full-scale invasion did not begin until February 2022.
Putin then claimed: “For better or worse, we had to gradually join [in with the 2014 conflict]. We had no choice but to get involved.”
According to an adviser to the Ukrainian government, Anton Gerashchenko, on X (formerly Twitter), even Russian army general Valery Gerasimov looked a bit bemused by the president’s words.
However, despite his criticism for the West, Putin said during the same meeting that Russia would be willing to talk on Ukraine.
Reuters noted that it’s likely he will wait for the US presidential election in November before making any headway with this claim, though.
He also made it very clear any kind of negotiations would be based “on our national interests” as Russia “will not give up what is ours”.
He added, “we are not going to abandon the goals of the special military operation,” using the Moscow term for Russia’s invasion.
It’s worth noting Russia has already downsized its original plan to completely conquer its European neighbour to just consolidate its control over the land it has already seized.
Still, the original goals, according to Moscow, were the “denazification” of Kyiv, and demilitarisation of Ukraine.
Russia currently controls around 17.5% of the territory internationally recognised as Ukrainian land, including four regions it has annexed since the invasion and Crimea.
However, Ukraine says the war is not over until every Russian soldier has left all of the land it sees as Ukrainian – including Crimea.
Putin also claimed Moscow has never intended to attack NATO – and does not plan to in the future.
“What would we do with NATO countries? We don’t need them. We did not need them in the past, we don’t need them now and we won’t need them in the future,” he said.
But, Russia has just summoned Finland’s ambassador to express concerns about the new NATO member’s growing military presence on its border.
The president also said Ukrainian membership of NATO “is not acceptable for Russia in 10 years, and not in 20”.