He recalled that Moscow “never refused to negotiate,” it was politicians in Kyiv who “withdrew from the negotiation process” as soon as troops were pulled back from Kyiv.

“We were deceived once again,” Putin said. “Now we have to understand who we should do business with and how. Who and to what extent we can trust. And, of course, we are now analyzing everything that is happening on this track.”

Putin recalled that when Russian troops were near Kyiv, the Western partners insisted on their pullback: “No documents can be signed if the opposite side puts a gun to your temple,” they argued.

“The next day they threw our agreements into the dustbin and said, ‘Well, now we will fight to the end’,” Putin recalled. “And their Western handlers took the position now known to the whole world: Russia is to be defeated on the battlefield, to be made suffer a strategic defeat. We are not the ones who behaved this way.

MP/PR