(St. Petersburg) Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Western arms deliveries to Ukraine were a “very dangerous measure,” as some countries including the United States recently authorized Kyiv to strike Russian territory under conditions.
“Providing weapons to a conflict zone is always a bad thing. Especially if it is linked to the fact that suppliers not only supply weapons, but control them. This is a very serious and very dangerous measure,” Putin said during a meeting with news agencies, including AFP.
The Russian president in particular scolded Germany, assuring that “when the first German tanks appeared on Ukrainian soil, this already caused a moral and ethical shock in Russia”, due to the liabilities linked to the Second World War.
“Today, when [German authorities] say that there will be other missiles hitting targets on Russian territory, this definitely destroys Russian-German relations,” he added.
Several countries, including the United States and Germany, have given the green light in recent weeks to Ukraine’s use of Western weapons to strike targets on Russian territory, in response to an offensive launched by Moscow in the Kharkiv region (north-east).
Mr. Putin once again asserted that his country was not the one that “started the war in Ukraine,” blaming Kyiv for the revolution that brought pro-Westerners to power in 2014, followed by the annexation of Crimea by Moscow and a separatist rebellion in the East led by Russia.
“Everyone thinks Russia started the war in Ukraine. I would like to emphasize that no one in the West, in Europe, wants to remember how this tragedy began,” Mr. Putin assured.