Vladimir Putin has said that Russian people may not survive in their current state as he claimed the West was trying to “disband” Russia.
The Russian president said the West wanted to divide up Russia and then control the world’s biggest producer of raw materials, a step, he said, that could well lead to the destruction of many of the peoples of Russia including the ethnic Russian majority.
Putin’s existential framing of the war allows the 70-year-old Kremlin chief to gird the Russian people for a much more deeper conflict while it also allows him much greater freedom in the types of weapons he could one day use.
“They [the West] have one goal: to disband the former Soviet Union and its fundamental part – the Russian Federation,” the Russian leader told Rossiya 1 state television in an interview recorded on Wednesday but released on Sunday.
He added: “I do not even know if such an ethnic group as the Russian people will be able to survive in the form in which it exists today.”
He said the West’s plans had been put to paper, though did not specify where.
05:03 PM
That’s all for today…
Here is a summary of what happened today.
Volodymr Zelensky has said that he will wear a suit when the war in Ukraine is over.
Vladimir Putin has said that Russian people may not survive in their current state as he claimed the West was trying to “disband” Russia.
Algeria will reopen its embassy in Kyiv one year after it was closed over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Algerian state television said on Sunday citing a foreign ministry statement.
Ukraine’s military said that Russia conducted unsuccessful offensives near Yahidne over the past day, after Russia’s Wagner mercenary group claimed to have captured the village in eastern Ukraine near the focus on intense fighting.