Russia was not yet ready for war in 2014

After annexing the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014, Russia was not prepared for a major war against Ukraine, according to Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin. “We didn’t have hypersonic weapons then, but now we have them,” Putin said in an interview published Sunday with Russian state television. So far, Russia has occasionally used the hypersonic weapons.

“There are other modern systems, there was nothing comparable in 2014,” he said, again claiming that Russia wanted to resolve the conflict over Ukraine peacefully at the time.

“We have a lot to do, for example to develop the ground forces,” Putin said when asked about the lessons learned from the war he started against Ukraine on February 24, 2022. He also addressed the question of whether the “special military operation” should not have started earlier because Ukraine did not yet have such weapons: Putin made it clear that Russia had to take “greater actions” in 2014 than when it annexed Crimea. finished.

Putin accuses Germany and France of “deception”.

At the same time, Putin accused the government in Kiev and the West of working to upgrade Ukraine after the annexation of Crimea and the start of hostilities in Donbass nine years ago. “As it turns out, as we see, we were just duped, none of our so-called partners intended to decide anything peacefully,” he said.

He accused former mediators Germany and France of deception in the wake of Minsk’s peace plans for the Donbass last year. Western partners “just pumped weapons into Ukraine and prepared it for battle.”

The president also justified the invasion of Ukraine by wanting to prevent an attack by Ukrainian forces on the Donbass. Moscow had accused the Ukrainian armed forces of waging war against their own people in the Donbass. Accordingly, the rights of the Russian-speaking population must be protected.

Kiev, in turn, accuses Russia of “genocide against the Ukrainians”, including kidnapping and re-educating children. Russia’s goal is to completely destroy the independent and sovereign state of Ukraine. (sda/dpa)