Putin claims he was not “anxious” about a confrontation with Ukraine and hoped for a “peaceful” resolution

March 19 () –

Russian President Vladimir Putin has assured that he had no particular desire to start a confrontation with Ukraine and that he anticipated a “peaceful” resolution to tensions with Kiev before the start of years of armed conflict that led to Russia’s invasion of the country, in February last year.

Putin went back to the annexation of Crimea in 2014, one of the direct precedents of the current armed conflict, arguing that his country “simply could not turn its back on the people of Crimea when it was already clashing with the nationalists.”

Russia ended up incorporating the peninsula into its territory through a referendum declared illegal by kyiv and its international allies.

“We had assumed that we would be able to resolve the situation in an absolutely peaceful way. I have never been eager to trigger any confrontation,” the Russian president said in an interview with the Rossiya 1 channel collected by the TASS news agency.

“We simply could not deny our support or our protection to the people of Crimea. They were already being attacked by the Nazis, as the Ukrainians say, and it was our sacred duty to protect them,” he explained.

However, Putin has reiterated that, at first, he hoped to resolve the situation in Crimea and, by extension, in the separatist regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, in eastern Ukraine, through negotiations.

“But now we realize that our then so-called partners intended to resolve anything by peaceful means. They simply pumped weapons into Ukraine and prepare their forces for military operations,” he added.

Putin has made these assessments after a visit in person to Crimea, followed by a stopover in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, taken by Russian forces, where he has promised to promote reconstruction and development projects while accusing Ukrainian forces of attacks against the civilian population.

The Russian president has assured, also in statements collected by TASS, that the Ukrainian forces have come to place mines in medical centers and hospitals in the city before abandoning their positions. “All the medical teams are undermined. That’s not how normal people behave,” he asserted.

Finally, Putin has promised to speed up plans to build new residential space in the city to make it a “little piece of paradise.”