Putin says Russia is at war with all NATO

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke on Thursday at the Valdai Discussion Club, in the Russian city of Sochi.

Moscow sees the Ukraine crisis as a “tragedy” that could have been prevented, Putin said, according to RT.

The president stressed that if NATO hadn’t continued its eastward expansion to Russia’s borders, the Ukraine conflict would have been avoided. He insisted that the blame for the fact that the hostilities between Moscow and Kiev are ongoing lies first and foremost on Western Europe.

“The Ukraine tragedy is painful for both Ukrainians and Russians. It’s painful for all of us,” Putin said.

He also accused Western Europe of continuing to “whip up hysteria that war with the Russians is supposedly on the doorstep” and condemned rampant militarization on the continent. Putin warned that Russia would eventually be forced to respond to such aggressive steps.

Putin stated that Russia is inextricably interwoven into a multitude of global economic, cultural, and logistical processes, and cannot be excluded from them at the whim of Western nations.

“I think that those who have tried to destroy [these links], have become convinced of” this reality, the Russian president said.

“It has turned out that the very global system that [some] wanted to expel us from, to squeeze us out of, is simply not letting Russia go, because it needs Russia as a very significant part of the universal balance,” Putin argued.

The West’s attempts to punish Russia through sanctions have completely failed, the president also said.

He noted that Russia has become the record holder in the number of sanctions placed on it. Nevertheless, the country has demonstrated incredible resilience, Putin said.

“You know how much effort our opponents have expended in recent years to push Russia out of the global system, to drive us into political, cultural, and informational isolation, and economic autarchy,” Putin said, adding that “there is no need to explain to anyone that these efforts have utterly failed.”

The president added that the pressure would normally be enough to break not only a country, but an entire coalition of nations, expressing pride in Russia, its people, and the military.

MNA