“We proceeded from the premise that we could solve all problems by absolutely peaceful means. We never looked for any kind of confrontation, and everything that happened in Crimea happened, as you know, “on wheels”, this is obvious to everyone,” Putin said. in an interview with the program “Moscow. Kremlin. Putin” on the TV channel “Russia-1”. The president’s answer to the question of whether it was worth starting a special operation in 2014 was published by journalist Pavel Zarubin on his Telegram channel.
The head of state pointed out that the Russian authorities could not refuse to support and protect the Crimeans “precisely because they were attacked, as they say in Ukraine, by the Nazis.”
“As for the Donbass, we were counting on the fact that we could solve this problem peacefully, but it turns out that now we see it, we were just led by the nose, none of our so-called partners were going to solve anything by peaceful means, but simply he injected Ukraine with weapons and prepared it for hostilities, and carried out two large-scale military operations using heavy equipment, artillery and aircraft,” Vladimir Putin emphasized.
