Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday accused NATO of being a party to the conflict in Ukraine by supplying arms to forces in Kiev as the Moscow offensive entered its second year.
“They are sending weapons worth tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine. This is really participation,” Putin said in an interview with Rossiya-1 broadcaster on Sunday.
“This means that they are complicit, albeit indirectly, in the crimes of the Kiev regime,” the Russian president said.
Western countries, he further emphasized, have “only one goal: to destroy the former Soviet Union and its main body, the Russian Federation.”
“Only then, perhaps, will they accept us into the so-called family of civilized peoples, but only separately, each part individually,” he added during these remarks on the sidelines of a patriotic concert on Thursday, on the eve of the first anniversary of the Russian offensive in the Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy promised again on Sunday that his country would recapture the Crimea peninsula, annexed from Moscow in March 2014. A declared desire that fuels fears of an escalation of the conflict.
“Nine years ago, Russian aggression in Crimea began. By restoring Crimea, we will restore peace. It is our country and our people, our history,” Mr Zelensky said on Telegram.
For its part, the US State Department in a statement welcomed “Ukraine’s efforts (…) to draw global attention to the ongoing Russian occupation.”
“The United States does not and will never recognize the so-called Russian annexation of the peninsula,” he added.
In an interview published on Sunday in the newspapers of the German regional press group Funke, number two of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency Vadym Skibitsky said Kiev was preparing a new counter-offensive for the spring.
“One of our strategic military goals is to try to drive a wedge in the Russian front in the south of the country towards Crimea,” he said.
“We will not stop until we return our country to its 1991 borders. This is our message to Russia and the international community,” Skibitsky added.
He is also considering possible Ukrainian bombing of military bases in Russia, particularly in the Belgorod border region, which has come under repeated attacks.
For months Ukraine has been insisting that the West supply it with long-range missiles and fighter jets.