Vladimir Putin has made the startling claim that the West is responsible for the conflict in Ukraine.
The Russian dictator said he was doing all he could to stop the war despite continuing to launch missile and drone strikes on civilians.
He also claimed Western people were friendly to him and Russia.
His comments came during a visit to secret closed nuclear city Sarov – the birthplace of the Soviet atomic bomb – on Friday.
Putin said: ‘Of course, there is propaganda working there [in the West], brainwashing people and claiming that we started the war.
The West and Kyiv were ‘forgetting that it was they [Ukraine] who started it in 2014 when they used tanks and aviation against the peaceful population of Donbas.
‘That is when the war began, and we are doing everything to stop it.’
(Picture: East2West News)
It comes a week after Putin met with US president Donald Trump to trash out peace talks in Alaska.
Peace talks have stalled but it raised the hopes of Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky meeting face-to-face for the first time since 2019.
In another incredible claim, Putin himself stopped military commanders from taking out Zelensky last year, according to one of his closest allies.
Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko, who once described the Russian leader as his ‘elder brother’, says Putin forbade plans to strike the headquarters of the Ukrainian presidency in Bankova area of Kyiv.
It came after the Russian doomsday missile system Oreshnik was tested without live warheads in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro in November 2024.
It sparked the plot to target Zelensky’s bunker and the heart of the government, according to Lukashenko, but Putin had other ideas.
He said: ‘After they struck with the Oreshnik, the Ukrainians realised: trouble’.
‘They can also hit Bankova. Insider information for you. Somone in Russia had such plans – (I will not name them).
‘Putin said: “Under no circumstances”.
‘They were ready to strike.
‘If they had fired the Oreshnik at the centres of decision-making, there would have been nothing left there’.
