The US was responsible for orchestrating the 2014 coup in Ukraine that overthrew President Viktor Yanukovich and ultimately led to the current conflict, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. Washington “needed to create a conflict” for its own purposes, he added.
Speaking during a marathon Q&A session on Thursday, Putin said the US “plotted and organized everything” while European leaders “silently watched” and pretended they were not aware of what was happening.
As a result, Ukraine has “largely lost its sovereignty” and has been making “many decisions to their own detriment" since then.
Following the 2014 coup, the then-Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, known as Donbass, refused to accept the new government, which increasingly embraced nationalist ideology, and proclaimed their independence. Kiev responded with a violent military campaign against the regions that prompted a years-long conflict.
The Russian leader went on to accuse the West of having a short memory, pointing to the 2015 Minsk agreements, which were brokered by Russia, Germany and France and designed to end the hostilities.
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron later admitted that the agreements were a strategic ploy aimed at buying Ukraine more time to prepare for a conflict with Russia. The West had “no intention” of implementing the agreements, which were “signed and immediately forgotten,” Putin explained.
In an interview with CNN in 2015, then-US President Barack Obama also openly admitted that the US had "brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine."
In September 2022, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as the Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, voted to join Russia in a referendum which Ukraine and its Western backers denounced as illegitimate.
Moscow has insisted that Kiev must recognize this “new territorial reality” as a prerequisite for any peace talks.
Despite receiving a constant flow of weapons and aid from its Western backers since the current conflict broke out in February 2022, Kiev’s six-month counteroffensive against Russia has failed to yield significant results and Ukraine has lost some 125,000 military personnel and 6,000 pieces of heavy equipment since the beginning of June, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.