Russian President Vladimir Putin is convinced that the goal of the West is to destroy Russia.
"The goal of the West is to weaken, divide and ultimately destroy our country," the head of state said in a televised address on Wednesday.
Putin pointed out that the West "is already talking directly about the fact that they were able to split the Soviet Union in 1991, and now the time has come for Russia itself, that it should disintegrate into many regions and areas fatally hostile to each other."
According to him, "they have been hatching such plans for a long time." "They have encouraged gangs of international terrorists in the Caucasus, pushed NATO offensive infrastructure close to our borders. They have made total Russophobia their weapon, including for decades they purposefully fostered hatred of Russia, especially in Ukraine, which they prepared the fate of the anti-Russian bridgehead, and turned the Ukrainian people into cannon fodder and pushed them into war with our country, They unleashed it - this war - back in 2014, using armed forces against civilians, organizing genocide, blockade, and terror against people who refused to recognize the government that emerged in Ukraine as a result of the coup d'état," Putin said.
The president noted that his address was dedicated to "necessary, urgent steps to protect the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Russia, to support the desire and will of compatriots to determine their own future and the aggressive policy of some Western elites, who are trying by all means to maintain their domination, and for this purpose are trying to block, suppress any sovereign independent centers of development, to continue roughly imposing their will on other countries and peoples, to impose their pseudo-values." "The topic of my speech is the situation in Donbass and the course of the special military operation to liberate it from the neo-Nazi regime that seized power in Ukraine in 2014 as a result of an armed coup," the head of state said.
He stressed that he was addressing "all citizens of the country, people of different generations, age and nationality, the people of the great motherland, all those united by the great historical Russia, soldiers and officers, volunteers who are now fighting on the front lines, are on combat duty, brothers and sisters - residents of Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, other areas liberated from the neo-Nazi regime."
GSV "Russia - Islamic world"
Photo: official website of the President of the Russian Federation
Based on materials from TASS