Russian President Vladimir Putin said on the sidelines of a meeting he had on Friday with the leadership of the Russian Foreign Ministry. “Let me remind you that it was Washington that undermined strategic stability by announcing the unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense Treaty, the abolition of medium- and shorter-range missiles in the open sky. Together with the NATO satellites, they destroyed the decades-long system of confidence-building measures and arms control in the European space. Ultimately, the selfishness and arrogance of the Western states led to today’s extremely dangerous state of affairs. We have come – and this is unacceptable – close to the point of no return ,” Putin said.

According to him, calls to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, which has the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, demonstrate the “excessive adventurism of Western politicians”.

The Russian president also set the conditions for Moscow to sit down at the negotiating table with Ukraine on the ceasefire. Specifically, he said that Kiev must withdraw its troops from all occupied regions (Zaporizia, Kherson, Donbass and Donetsk) in order to start negotiations. He also added that another condition should be Kiev’s declaration that it renounces its intentions to join NATO.  “We are ready to sit at the negotiating table even tomorrow,” Putin said, among other things.  “As soon as Kiev declares that it is ready for such a decision and begins a real withdrawal of troops from these areas, as well as officially announces the abandonment of plans to join NATO, our side will follow immediately, literally in the same minute , the order to cease fire and start negotiations… I repeat, we will do this immediately. Our terms are very simple. If the West and Kiev refuse, it will become their responsibility for the bloodshed. Moscow does not want the freezing of the conflicts in Ukraine, but their termination.” Commenting on the ten-year security agreement signed by the US and Ukraine at the G7 summit, Putin called it a “bluff”, an insignificant agreement that could collapse at any time. “In the first half of the year, Ukraine concluded a package of two agreements with a number of European countries, now a similar document has appeared with the United States… If a serious legal review of such an agreement is later carried out, the question will certainly arise: who signed these documents and by what authority. It turns out that all this is a bluff: the agreement is insignificant and the whole edifice will collapse,” said the Russian president.

In another point of his statements, Putin questioned the legitimacy of the presence of Volodymyr Zelensky in the presidency of Ukraine. “The presidential term of the previously elected head of Ukraine has ended, along with his legitimacy, which cannot be restored by any tricks ,” he said and continued, calling the cancellation of the presidential elections in Ukraine a “show”. “Today’s tragic page in the history of Ukraine began with the violent seizure of power, the unconstitutional coup of 2014. The source of the current regime in Kiev is an armed coup. And now the circle closes ,” said the Russian president.

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