Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in his annual address to the nation and with two weeks to go before the presidential elections, has warned the West against sending troops to Ukraine.
“They need to understand we too have weapons that can strike targets on their territory,” he said. Western rhetoric threatened a “conflict with the use of nuclear arms and consequently the destruction of civilisation,” he added.
Recently, French president Emmanuel Macron refused to rule out sending troops to Ukraine, but admitted that there is no consensus on the issue as of now.
At a meeting recently in Paris of 20 European leaders on ways to boost flagging support for Kyiv, Macron said, “There is no consensus to officially back any ground troops. That said, nothing should be excluded. We will do everything that we can to make sure that Russia does not prevail”.
However, the US and other key European allies clarified that there were no plans in place to send ground troops to Ukraine.
Some of the other issues that the Russian leaders addressed in his speech included the country’s economic growth last year. Putin claimed that Moscow outpaced the economic growth of all other G7 countries. He expressed confidence that in the near future, Russia would become “one of the four largest economies in the world.”
“The growth of the Russian economy should be converted into an increase in the income of the population,” he added.
The former KGB intelligence officer said that Russia would need to strengthen its western military district now that Sweden and Finland have joined NATO. Finland has a long land border with northwest Russia. He claimed that “without a sovereign, strong Russia, a strong world order is impossible”.
Putin said that he was ready to talk with the United States on strategic stability, but ruled out attempts to force Russia into talks, which he said would be unacceptable. He also rejected the possibility of negotiations on strategic stability with the US in isolation from Russian national security issues.
