Posted on 06/15/2023 6:03:31 PM PDT by delta7
Yevgeny Poddubny: Good afternoon, Mr President.
Thank you very much for finding the time to meet with us.
President of Russia Vladimir Putin: I am very happy to see you all.
Yevgeny Poddubny: Our previous meetings have all taken place in an atmosphere of trust. Our conversations have always been sharp and frank, and we are very grateful to you for this.
Vladimir Putin: I feel you won’t be able to do that if the cameras are on; everyone wants to fire up the audience when the TV cameras are on.
Yevgeny Poddubny: No, we will keep things in hand.
All of you here are very seasoned professionals, especially people like you who have been under fire for more than a year. Your mentality changes. I know this from my own experience even though I haven’t crawled under flying bullets like you have, I have known this since the time I flew in a helicopter with tracer fire around us. You know, all this changes your mentality. So, what is the point of our actions? We will have to take two steps from the centre of the field. After all, we wanted and still want to have the best possible relations with all our neighbours after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is what we are doing. We have accepted that what happened, happened, and now we must live with it.
And you know, I’ve already said that, no secret here, we did offer every option to our Western partners, as I used to call them, we thought we were one of them, we wanted to be in the family of so-called civilised nations. I reached out to NATO suggesting that we look into that possibility, but we were quickly shown the door; they didn't even bother to consider it. I also suggested creating a shared missile defence system.
We are aware that the events of the 1990s – early 2000s stem from a bitter historical legacy in the Caucasus, for instance. Who were we fighting there? Mostly, Al-Qaeda. And what did our “partners” do?
Ukraine is part of the effort to destabilise Russia. By and large, this should have been kept in mind when decisions were made on breaking the Soviet Union up. But then, apparently, it was expected that our profound relations would be decisive. But due to a number of historical, economic and political circumstances the situation took a different path. We tried everything on this path as well. In fact, we have, for decades, if not fed, but sustained their economy – you are aware of this, since I have written and talked about it – with cheap energy, other things, loans and so on. To no avail. How did it end eventually? They started killing our supporters in the streets and eventually staged a coup d’etat.
Look, this is not the first coup. How did Yushchenko come to power in Ukraine? Was it as a result of a legitimate procedure? Do you want me to show you how he came to power? We are aware of it. They came up with a third round of elections. What was that about? This was not enshrined in the Constitution. It was a coup, but at least a relatively peaceful one. And we did communicate with them. I went there and they came to us, no problem. But eventually, they pushed it to a bloody coup. That is, it became obvious that we were not given any chance to build normal relations with our neighbours and the fraternal Ukrainian people. Not a single chance.
…….
Senile Joe, are you taking notes?
what a load of Russian BS from a dictatorial thug
as always, Russia is the victim ... LOL!!!
What a pack of lies.
Putin has slobbering sycophants in his media, Biden has the same in our media.
You didn’t read the transcripts. Closed mind.
Vlad is much like Trump, he does what he says, and puts his people first. They are lucky to have him….and we are stuck with a senile, babbling old war cheerleader….
I didn’t here one word about Russia being a ‘victim”....
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