Getting hotter in Ukraine: Putin calls out the west & NATO

 

 

Sputnik

Referendums on joining Russia will be held in the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, as well as the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions of eastern Ukraine on September 23-27 - events that will come as Russia continues its special military operation in Ukraine.

In an address to the nation on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin focused on a number of pressing issues related to the West's stance on Russia and Moscow's special military operation in Ukraine.

'The West Wants to Destroy Russia'

Putin pointed out that the West’s current goal is to "destroy Russia."

“The purpose of the West is to weaken, divide and ultimately destroy our country. They are already directly saying that in 1991 they were able to split the Soviet Union, and now the time has come for Russia itself, and that it should disintegrate into many mortally warring regions,” the Russian president stressed.

According to him, such plans have been hatched in the West for a long time, as they encouraged gangs of international terrorists in the Caucasus, promoted the installation of NATO's offensive infrastructure close to Russia's borders [US first-strike missile launch facilities in Poland and Romania] and made "total Russophobia their weapon."

Putin said that the Western elites are targeting Russia with their aggressive policy in order to maintain their dominance.

“[We talk] about the aggressive policy of a number of the Western elites, who are striving with all their might to maintain their dominance, and for this purpose they are trying to block or suppress any sovereign independent centers of development in order to further brutally impose their will on other countries and nations, to plant their fake values,” according to the Russian president.

Putin also said that the West “has crossed every line in its aggressive anti-Russian policy,” adding that “we constantly hear threats against our country and our people.”

"Some irresponsible politicians in the West talk about plans to organize the supply of long-range offensive weapons to Ukraine, systems that are capable of launching strikes against Crimea and other regions of Russia”.

In his TV address on Wednesday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that Russia was at war with the collective West rather than Ukraine.

“In reality, we are fighting the collective West plus NATO. When we speak about it, we mean not only the weapons being supplied [to Kiev] in huge batches, but also about [space-based] systems of communication and information processing systems,” Shoigu said.

The Western states as well as NATO, he said, are supplying Kiev with "huge" amounts of weapons. The minister went on to stress that the Ukrainian forces are increasingly using Western weapons to target civilian infrastructure, including hospitals.

He stressed that more than 70 military satellites and 200 civilian satellites are working to aid Ukraine and added that some 150 Western military specialists have been deployed to Kiev, de facto leading Ukrainian forces.

Military Losses of Russia and Ukraine

Touching upon the issue of the military costs of the armed conflict in Ukraine, Sergei Shoigu estimated that Kiev has lost half of its army, which originally had about 200,000 troops at the initial stage of Moscow’s special operation.

"Over this time, their losses amount to over 100,000 [military casualties]. This includes 61,207 deaths and 49,368 troops who were injured," Shoigu said. 

“Our losses to date are 5,937 dead,” Shoigu revealed.