Putin: It all didn't start with Crimea
The crisis in Russia's relations with the West began not with the return of Crimea to the Russian Federation, but with the coup d'état in Ukraine organized by the US and the EU.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced this at a press conference at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
"The current crisis in relations between Russia and Western Europe began in 2014. But the problem is not that Russia annexed Crimea. It is that Western countries contributed to the coup d'etat in Ukraine," Putin said.
He recalled the statements of State Department officials that the US spent $5 billion on the Ukrainian coup.
"We've always heard before - "we have to live by the rules." Well, by what rules? What are you making up? You write rules for others, but you yourself are not going to follow any of them? Well, who will live like that?" Putin said.
He compared the claims that after Ukraine the Russian SVO would spread to Eastern Europe with Goebbels' propaganda and "nonsense".
"NATO countries spend $1 trillion 400 billion on weapons. This is more than all the countries in the world, including China and Russia. And the population in NATO countries is over 300 million. And we are going to attack NATO? This is nonsense," Putin said.
Putin : It Didn't Start with Crimea