After the arrival of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Ukraine, Russia reaffirmed its war objective of preventing the neighboring country from joining the military alliance.
According to the Interfax agency, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said today that Russia is threatened by Ukraine’s possible accession to NATO. “Because otherwise it poses a serious and significant threat to our country, to its security,” Peskov said. Stoltenberg visited Kiev for the first time since the start of the war.
At the beginning of the war, almost 14 months ago, on February 24, 2022, Russia also declared that it wanted to demilitarize Ukraine. The West is supplying the country with weapons and ammunition for its defense against the Russian invasion.
Russia has accused NATO countries of becoming increasingly involved in the war. The Russian leadership has long presented the war as a global conflict with the West as a whole – and is therefore trying to recruit men to the front lines.
Kremlin spokesman denies Putin doppelganger
Kremlin spokesman Peskov also commented on recent allegations from Kiev that President Vladimir Putin was using a stunt double. These are “very strange” statements.
Specifically, this time it was about Putin’s visit to the front in the occupied areas of Kherson and Luhansk in recent days. “That was not the real Putin,” said Secretary of the National Security Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov. The Putin seen in Kherson was “an ordinary double, of which there are several, as is well known”.
However, there is no evidence that there is actually a Putin double in official appointments. Indeed, Putin once said that, for security reasons, he had been advised in the past to use a body double at official engagements. “The idea came up, but I gave up on doubles,” he said.