Putin reiterates that Ukraine never existed and he was forced to start war

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has once again stated that Ukraine did not exist before Soviet times, that the territories in the south and east of Ukraine historically belonged to Russia, and that Russia had no choice but to "dust off the assault rifle" when Ukraine was implementing its pro-Ukrainian policy.

Source: TASS, a Kremlin-aligned Russian news outlet, quoting Vladimir Putin at a meeting with new members of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation 

Quote: "All the southern Russian lands were transferred during the formation of Soviet Ukraine, during the creation of the USSR. There was no Ukraine within the empire: there were oblasts, but Ukraine itself, which came [into the Russian empire – ed.] in the 16th century, consisted of three oblasts: the city of Kyiv and the oblasts of Kyiv, Zhytomyr and Chernihiv – that's all. It came from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita), from Poland, voluntarily. 

We have a letter in our archives: ‘We, the Orthodox people of Rus, appeal to Moscow, to the tsar, and so on.’ And in an attempt to defend their rights, they also sent appeals to Warsaw: ‘We, the Orthodox people of Rus, ask you to preserve this and that, and demand this.’ 

Then what happened happened. The Soviet Union was formed and a vast Ukraine was formed, first and foremost, to a significant extent, at the expense of the southern Russian lands - the entire Black Sea region and so on - although all of these cities, as you know, were founded by Catherine the Great after a series of wars with Turkey, the Ottoman Empire." 

Details: Putin claimed that modern Russia had "come to terms with" the loss of Ukraine after the collapse of the USSR, but "when they started destroying everything of Russian origin there, that was obviously unacceptable!" 

"And they ended up declaring that Russians are not indigenous to these lands – well, this is complete nonsense. And at the same time, they began to exterminate Russians in Donbas," Putin ranted, not specifying who he meant by "Russians".

According to Putin, the Ukrainian authorities had no intention of implementing the Minsk agreements and "started pulling all this territory into NATO", ignoring Russia's protests. 

Quote: "This is what is at the centre of the conflict that is happening today. This is the cause of this conflict.

And of course, if we had had normal, modern, friendly relations with fraternal Ukraine – we are brothers as far as ethnicity is concerned! – no one would have thought of taking actions related to Crimea, for example. 

If everything had been fine there, if Russian people, the Russian language and Russian culture had been treated normally, and if there had not been those coups d'état, would anyone in Russia have thought of acting the way we did in Crimea [referring to the annexation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea – ed.]? Of course not! We had to protect people from this Nazi abomination.

They simply put us in a position where we could do nothing else but defend the people living there. The same thing happened later with Donbas and Novorossiya [Ukraine’s south]." 

Details: Putin said that before you "dust off the assault rifle", you have to think about whether it is possible to do without it. In the case of Ukraine, this was impossible, he said. He reiterated the propaganda that these were historical territories of Russia and that the people living there were "Russians". 

According to Putin, Russia had no choice but to launch the "special operation" because "we had already been attacked". By "us", Putin meant Russian-speaking Ukrainians in Ukraine’s east and south.

"They considered themselves part of Russia from the beginning, but they were attacked in 2014. First they [the Ukrainians - ed.] tried to attack Crimea, and then Donbas. And we spent eight years trying to resolve this situation peacefully. In the end, we were told: ‘We will not use peaceful means.’ They refused publicly and said they wouldn’t do it, that they didn’t like the Minsk agreements... We had to put an end to this," he said.

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