Russia accuses the West of trying to “prolong” the conflict in Ukraine

First modification: 08/16/2022 – 14:55

Close to completing six months of military confrontation on Ukrainian territory, President Vladimir Putin accuses the West of “prolonging” the war that Russia launched on February 20.

In a video message broadcast on the sidelines of the international security conference in Moscow, Putin assured that the United States and its Western allies intend to use the Ukrainian people as “cannon fodder” to maintain their influence in the world.

“The situation in Ukraine shows that the US is trying to prolong this conflict (…) to preserve their hegemony they need conflicts. Precisely for this reason they prepared the role of cannon fodder for the people of Ukraine,” assured the Russian president.

Putin once again justified the war he launched against his neighboring country by accusing kyiv and the West of allegedly executing an “anti-Russia project”, with which they would have ignored mass murders in Donbass, eastern Ukraine. In his words, to allow the spread of a “neo-Nazi” ideology.

“Under these conditions we decided to carry out a special military operation in Ukraine in full accordance with the Charter of the United Nations (…) They crammed and continue to cram the kyiv regime with weapons, including heavy ones,” Putin reproached the sending of aid. to the Ukrainian defenses.

A cooperation to which the world powers have opted to avoid direct military intervention on the ground, which they estimate would cause a conflict of greater proportions.

Putin accuses the US of seeking a NATO-like system in Asia

During his speech, the Kremlin leader also accused Washington of trying to extend a system similar to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Asia, following House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit to Taiwan. .

It was a brief official trip on August 2, but it sparked the ire of China, a country that launched live-fire military exercises around the independent island it claims as its own.

“It was not just a trip of a single irresponsible politician, but part of a conscious and determined strategy of the United States to destabilize and sow chaos in the region and the world,” said the Russian president.

The president cited the AUKUS security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States as alleged evidence of Western attempts to build a NATO-style bloc in the Asia-Pacific region.

“We also see that the collective West is trying to extend its bloc system to the Asia-Pacific region by analogy with NATO in Europe. For this purpose, aggressive politico-military alliances are being formed, such as AUKUS and others,” he asserted.

The Kremlin leader’s remarks are part of a narrative that Moscow is vigorously pushing as it seeks to justify its war in Ukraine and build new global alliances to counter what it calls “Western hegemony” and “neo-colonialism.”

As Western governments condemn the invasion as an imperial land grab and have banded together to impose waves of economic sanctions against Russia, the Kremlin is actively courting countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America with the prospect of closer trade ties, arms sales and a vision of a new “multipolar world order”.

Russia attributes the explosions that destroyed an arms depot in Crimea to “sabotage”

Multiple explosions rocked a Russian ammunition depot in Crimea on Tuesday and disrupted train service on the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

It is the latest such incident in a region that Moscow uses as a supply line for its war in Ukraine.

kyiv has neither officially confirmed nor denied responsibility for the blasts, though its officials openly applauded the incidents in territory that, until last week, seemed safe in Moscow’s hands.

If its participation is confirmed, the Ukrainian Army would demonstrate a new capacity to penetrate deeper into the territory controlled by the Russians, which would potentially change the dynamics of the conflict.

Meanwhile, Moscow acknowledged the facts and described them as “sabotage”.

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Russian authorities confirmed that two people were injured by the blasts and around 2,000 residents of a nearby town were evacuated.

“On the morning of August 16, as a result of sabotage, a military warehouse was destroyed in the town of Dzhankoe,” the capital of the homonymous district, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

According to the Kremlin, as a result of the explosions, several civilian facilities were also destroyed, including a high-voltage line, electrical substations, the railway line and several houses.

The detonation of the ammunition depot comes a week after a series of explosions at a military airfield also in Crimea, an event in which kyiv denied involvement but said dozens of Russian warplanes were destroyed.

With Reuters, AP and EFE