Moscow. 1st of February. INTERFAX-AVN - The United States cares little about the security of Ukraine, they want to use this country as a tool to deter Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.
"It seems to me that the same United States does not care so much about the security of Ukraine, although they may be thinking about it, but somewhere in the background," he said at a press conference following talks with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
"But their most important task is to restrain the development of Russia. And in this sense, Ukraine itself is just a tool to achieve this goal," Putin continued.
According to him, this goal can be achieved in different ways.
"To drag us into some kind of armed conflict and force us, with the help of their allies in Europe, to impose the toughest sanctions against us that the United States is talking about today. Or to draw Ukraine into NATO, to train shock weapons systems there and encourage some Bandera to resolve the issue of Donbass or Crimea by armed means and thus still drag us into an armed conflict," Putin said.
"If we look at all these numerous issues deeply, seriously, it becomes clear that in order to avoid such a negative development of the situation, and we want to avoid it, we need to really take into account the interests of all countries, including Russia, and find a solution to this problem," he said.
