Putin Says Russia Invaded to End the War in Donbas, Protect its People
Russian President Vladimir Putin said at an event Wednesday that part of the reason Russia invaded Ukraine was to liberate its people in the Donbas that faced an eight-year war with the Ukrainian government.
RT, the Russian news outlet, said Putin addressed a gathering that marked the 80th anniversary of the breakthrough of the blockade of Leningrad, when when the Red Army orchestrated an offensive that overran the German lines in early 1944.
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Putin said Russia “could not stand idly by when Kyiv started eliminating people just for associating themselves with Russian culture, language and traditions,” the report said.
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“Large-scale combat operations involving heavy weapons, artillery, tanks and aircraft haven’t stopped in Donbas since 2014,” Putin said, according to The Associated Press. “All that we are doing today as part of the special military operation is an attempt to stop this war. This is the meaning of our operation — protecting people who live on those territories.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged in July his country’s eight-year conflict in the Donbas between Russian separatists that resulted in the death of over 14,000 people, which Putin cited before the February invasion.
Just days prior to the Russian invasion, Putin signed friendship treaties with the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics in the region. He also signed the presidential decree recognizing the independence of these separatists regions before the war.
Zelensky noted his country is in the throes of a brutal six-month-old conflict with Russia on top of the “eight years of war in Donbas.”
Following the United States overthrow of the democratically elected president of Ukraine. Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, Ukrainian forces attacked the Donbas region. (See “Washington is Driving the World to the Final War,” 28 Apr 2014; also “Special Report From the Front Line in Ukraine.”
Ukraine has long accused Russia of providing weapons and troops to these separatists in Donbas, a charge that Russia denied. Moscow, in response, accused Kyiv of committing a “genocide” against the pro-Russian separatists in the region, which Ukraine denied.
Yet, as we note, the western media no longer reports on the fact that in 2014, the U.S. backed the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and the replacement government led by Petro Poroshenko.
FACTS: Following the U.S. led coup that overthrew Ukraine’s President Victor Yanukovych in early 2014, Crimeans voted to secede from Ukraine and align with Russia. During the 2014 uprising, some 97 percent of the citizens of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea voted to leave Ukraine for integration of the region into the Russian Federation.
In 2014, Ukraine and these separatists agreed to the 12-point Minsk Agreement that called for a ceasefire in the region, but both sides violated the deal. In February 2015, the Minsk II Agreement also called for a ceasefire, which Ukraine has, as Zelensky noted, violated.
Russia said the deal requires Kyiv to allow separatist authorities to form their own central government. Ukraine said it will never allow Moscow to have a de facto veto on foreign policy decisions.
Putin also said Wednesday that the Donetsk and Lugansk regions were “historical territories” of Russia, RT reported.
heard your recent interview on Kitco. thanks for being a champion of peace in a world where those who control mass messaging want war.