Reuters
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President Vladimir Putin stated on Thursday that Russia will respond swiftly if it thinks Europe is provoking it and stated that nearly all the U.S.-led NATO alliance was now preventing towards Russia over Ukraine.
The struggle in Ukraine, Europe’s deadliest since World War Two, has sparked the most important confrontation between Russia and the West for the reason that 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Putin, talking on the Valdai Discussion Group within the Black Sea resort of Sochi, stated Russian forces had been advancing alongside all the entrance in Ukraine.
“All the NATO countries are fighting with us,” Putin stated.
NATO members, he stated, had been offering Ukraine with intelligence, weapons and coaching. Should Europe provoke Russia, he stated, the response can be swift.
“If anyone still has a desire to compete with us in the military sphere, as we say, feel free, let them try,” Putin stated. “Russia’s countermeasures will not be long in coming.”
Putin dismissed US President Donald Trump’s claims that Russia was “a paper tiger”, saying Russia had probably the most succesful military on the earth.
He steered that if Russia was a paper tiger then NATO was too and challenged the West to cope with the paper tiger if that was what it thought it was up towards.
Russia, Putin stated, had proven over the centuries that it would respond quickly if provoked.
“The elites of united Europe continue to whip up hysteria,” he stated. “It turns out that war with the Russians is almost on the threshold. They repeat this nonsense, this mantra over and over again.”
“Genuinely, I just want to say: cool down, sleep calmly, and take care of your own problems. Just take a look at what’s happening on the streets of European cities,” Putin stated.
Western European leaders and Ukraine solid the struggle as an imperial-style land seize and have repeatedly vowed to defeat Russian forces. They argue that except Russia is defeated, Putin will threat an assault on a NATO member will threat an assault on a NATO member.
Putin portrays the struggle as a watershed second in Moscow’s relations with the West, which he says humiliated Russia after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union by enlarging NATO and encroaching on what he considers Moscow’s sphere of affect.
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