Saint Petersburg (Russia) (EFE).- Russian President Vladimir Putin defended the innocence of former US President Donald Trump and stuck to his guns regarding Ukraine, although he ruled out a possible direct confrontation with NATO, in his first interview with Western media, including EFE, since the beginning of the war.
“If you want the fighting in Ukraine to stop, stop supplying it with weapons. And these military actions will conclude in two or three months at most,” said Putin, who recalled the letter he sent to US President Joe Biden.
Putin, who has very limited ability to move due to the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes, has not faced uncomfortable questions from Western journalists since 2021.
And as a setting he chose the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum and one of the symbols of Russian developmentalism, the Lajta Center in Saint Petersburg, the tallest building in Europe and headquarters of the Russian gas giant, Gazprom.
Trump is innocent
While stating that he did not want to meddle in American politics, Putin did not hesitate to defend Trump’s innocence and once again ridiculed the claim that he is a spy in the Kremlin’s pay.
“It is evident to everyone that the judicial persecution of Trump, without evidence, represents the use of the judicial system in the political struggle,” he said.
He assured that American citizens themselves do not trust Justice, which causes an evident degradation of the country’s political system, and gave as proof the increase in popularity of the candidate for the US Presidency.
“People in the US do not believe in these decisions and consider that they have a political background,” he asserted.
Putin, who once again insisted that Russia would benefit from Biden’s victory in November, considering it more “predictable,” assured that whatever the outcome of the US presidential elections, “nothing will really change much” for the Kremlin.
Ukraine, peace Putin’s way
In line with the Kremlin’s tone in recent weeks, in addition to repeating the refrain that the current conflict began in 2014 with a coup d’état in kyiv, Putin called on the West to stop hindering the prospects for peace in Ukraine, whose Army -he remembered- he would be suffering five times more casualties than the Russian.
While he assured that the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, is an illegitimate interlocutor because his mandate expired on May 20, he recalled that it was not Russia but the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, who aborted the signing of the Istanbul treaty that would have ended the war within weeks of starting, in March 2022.
“And I am sure, I have no doubt, that it had the support of the US Administration,” he stated, adding that the White House is not interested in Ukraine, but simply in maintaining its hegemony in the world.
For this reason, he considered the supply to kyiv of precision and long-range weapons from NATO countries to be so dangerous, since it will obstruct any semblance of peace by directly threatening Russian territory, “destroying international relations and undermining global security.”
In fact, he warned that the Kremlin is considering an “asymmetric” response that could consist of the deployment of Russian missiles in regions where they could be used against “sensitive infrastructure” of the countries that arm kyiv.
Attacking NATO, nonsense
Throughout the interview it was clear that NATO is to blame for all the evils for the Kremlin, but the Russian leader called a possible attack against an Alliance country “nonsense.”
“Have you seen the potential of Russia and NATO? Do they think we are crazy? “He stated to the surprise of some of those present, who were expecting a more bellicose Kremlin chief.
Without directly accusing the media, he denounced that someone “has invented that Russia wants to attack NATO.”
“Who invented it? It’s nonsense, do you understand? A delirium,” said Putin, who when pronouncing these words he was sitting with his back to the Baltic Sea, whose waters bathe the coasts of the two new members of the Atlantic Alliance, Finland and Sweden.
Putin, who answered more than twenty questions, denounced the attempts to “deceive the population” of Western countries to justify sending heavy weapons to Ukraine to prolong the war and the agony of its participants.
