“We had anticipated that there would be speculation of this kind, about whether Russia is preparing to restore an empire,” he said during a meeting in the Kremlin with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev. And “this does not correspond to reality at all,” he added.
The Russian president stressed that after the dismemberment of the USSRRussia has “acknowledged the new realities and worked very actively to strengthen” cooperation with other former Soviet countries, citing as an example neighbors such as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.
According to him, the situation in Ukraine is “different”, since “its territory is being used by third countries to create threats against Russia”.
In addition to having recognized pro-Russian secessionists in Ukraine on Monday, Russia had also recognized two breakaway territories in Georgia (2008), annexed the peninsula of crimea (2014) and supported Transnistrian separatism in Moldova since the early 1990s.
On Monday night, Putin, in a long speech with a threatening tone, denied the legitimacy of the Ukrainian state in general and insisted on his thesis of presenting it as an artificial country, inseparable from Russia.
The Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Andrei Rudenko, meanwhile, clarified that Russia has no intention “for now” of deploying troops in the separatist regions of eastern Ukraine, but will do so if there is “a threat”.
“If there is a threat, then of course we will give our help according to the agreement that has been ratified,” he added.
Two Putin decrees signed on Monday ask the Defense Ministry that “the Russian armed forces assume peacekeeping functions on the territory” of the “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Both texts were approved by the Duma (Russian parliament) on Tuesday.
These texts “fix the obligations of the parties to guarantee mutual assistance if one of the parties is the object of an attack” and “provide for common border protection.”
For weeks, Russia has deployed some 150,000 soldiers on the Ukrainian borders, raising fears of an invasion by its neighbor.
Source: Ambito
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