Russia isn’t fighting the Ukrainian people – Putin
Russia’s conflict is with the illegitimate Kiev regime, not the Ukrainian people, President Vladimir Putin said on Monday during a televised meeting at the Russian Defense Ministry. The president pointed to the US-backed 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev as the source of many problems currently experienced by both Ukraine and Russia.
Vladimir Zelensky no longer has a legitimate claim to power, and his policies are criminal under Ukrainian law, Putin argued, adding that the current leader in Kiev is responsible for crimes against both Ukrainians and Russians.
Zelensky refused to hold presidential and parliamentary elections this year, citing martial law, thus remaining in power after his term expired in May. The Ukrainian constitution requires the presidential powers to be transferred to the speaker of the parliament in such cases.
According to the Russian president, Moscow’s fight in the Ukraine conflict is with the people usurping power in the country and not with anyone else.
“We are not fighting against the Ukrainian people, but the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev,” Putin said. The original source of the problems that Ukraine and Russia are facing now is the violent 2014 coup in Kiev, he stressed.
Putin also offered a reminder about those circumstances and cited several ways in which the current leadership has been undermining the Ukrainian judiciary through intimidation, effectively rendering the nation’s top courts dysfunctional.
People in power [in Kiev] are committing crimes daily against their own people and ours. This regime is obviously losing traits of statehood.
The deterioration explains why Ukrainian policies are so atrocious, Putin argued. He predicted that the next major instance of such policymaking will be a reduction of the mandatory conscription age to 18.
“That would be nothing short of a crime. They could just as well reduce it to 14… and still fail to change the situation on the battlefield,” Putin said.
The Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Region makes little military sense, but has resulted in a wave of crimes against the Russian civilian population, the president added. The Russian authorities and special services will track those atrocities and hold the perpetrators accountable, he promised.
Kiev launched the operation in August, claiming it would slow the Russian advance on other parts of the frontline.
Kiev represents the interests of the West rather than the Ukrainian people and will “send young men to die” on the order of its real constituency, according to Putin. And when the government falls, Ukrainian officials will simply flee to Western nations to find shelter and enjoy their corrupt gains made at the expense of the Ukrainian people, he concluded.
