During a press conference in Saint Petersburg before foreign media, the Russian leader Vladimir Putin warned this Wednesday (06/05/2024) that deliveries of Western weapons to Ukraine, in conflict with Russia for more than two years due to an invasion ordered by Putin himself, constitute a “very dangerous step”, especially if those who send them also “control” their use.
“Delivering weapons to a war zone is always bad,” said the politician, whose country receives Iranian drones to attack Ukrainian cities. “Even more so if those who deliver them not only deliver weapons but also control them. “That is a very serious and very dangerous step,” declared Putin, who also stated that if Germany were to send long-range Taurus missiles capable of hitting Moscow, Russian-German relations would be definitively destroyed.
“Now when they talk about also sending missiles that will attack targets on Russian territory, that, of course, definitively destroys Russian-German relations,” he said. He also assured that the appearance of German tanks in Ukraine – the Leopard 2 – caused a “shock” in Russian society, “which had a very positive attitude towards Germany.”
He also took the opportunity to criticize the German Government, which he accused of “not defending the interests of Germany.” “It is clear that Germany is not totally sovereign, but the Germans exist. And you have to think at least a little about their interests,” he said.
Defend Trump
Putin also warned that Russia could deliver long-range missiles to third countries that could use those weapons to attack “strategic points” in the territory of Western allies that supply weapons to Ukraine, in what he described as a “symmetrical” response. The leader He used the conference also to repeat his speech that it was not Russia that started the war, but the West.
In the opinion of the Kremlin leader, the war began when Ukrainian citizens rose up in 2014 against the decision of the kyiv Government to move away from Europe to get closer to Moscow. The fall of pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych was followed by Russia’s decision to illegally annex Ukrainian Crimea and subsequently support a pro-Russian rebellion in eastern Ukraine.
“Everyone believes that Russia started the war in Ukraine,” said the leader who ordered the invasion of another country. “I would like to emphasize that no one in the West, in Europe, wants to remember how this tragedy began,” he added. Furthermore, Putin assured that there are already instructors from Western countries in Ukraine and “they are suffering casualties,” without offering evidence of this, and added that Ukrainian casualties in the conflict are at least five times higher than Russian casualties, again without offering evidence. .
He also referred to Donald Trump, and attributed the former US president’s legal problems to an “internal political struggle” between Democrats and Republicans before the November presidential elections. “It is obvious around the world that the prosecution of Trump on charges based on events that took place years ago, without direct evidence, is a mere use of the judicial system in an internal political struggle,” he said.
DZC (EFE, AFP)
