Russia planning to attack NATO? President Vladimir Putin says ‘no reason to…’
In addition to rejecting Biden’s remark he called the US President’s remark as “complete nonsense” and regarded it as an attempt to justify his “mistaken policy” on Russia, reported Reuters citing an interview published by Rossiya state television on Sunday.
Notably, the war in Ukraine has triggered the deepest crisis in Moscow’s relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Amid the deepening crisis, US President Joe Biden had warned last year that a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia would trigger World War Three.
US President Joe Biden had made these remarks in a plea to Republicans to convince them not to block further military aid earlier this month. In the plea, Biden had warned that if Putin was victorious over Ukraine then the Russian leader would not stop and would attack a NATO country, reported Reuters.
Complete Nonsense: President Putin on Joe Biden’s remark on Russia
On being asked about the US claim on Kremlin’s plan to attack NATO in the interview, Russia President Vladimir Putin said, “It is complete nonsense – and I think President Biden understands that.” He also added that Biden appeared to be trying to justify his own “mistaken policy” on Russia.
“Russia has no reason, no interest – no geopolitical interest, neither economic, political nor military – to fight with NATO countries,” Putin said.
The U.S.-led NATO alliance was founded in 1949 to provide Western security against the Soviet Union. After the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, it was enlarged to include some former Soviet and Warsaw Pact countries.
Putin has repeatedly cast the post-Cold War expansion of NATO as evidence of the West’s arrogant way of dealing with Russia’s security concerns.
Under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, “the Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all”.
Putin said that Finland’s entry into NATO in April would force Russia to “concentrate certain military units” in northern Russia near their border.
COLD WAR?
The failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive this year has raised questions in the West and inside Ukraine about just how realistic the Ukrainian and Western aims of defeating Russian forces in Ukraine are.
Officials in Moscow and the West have repeatedly spoken of a “new Cold War”, with Russia and China on one side and the West on the other.
Asked about how common ground could be found with the West given the rhetoric on both sides, Putin said: “They will have to find common ground because they will have to reckon with us.”
A senior U.S. State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said last month that Putin would not make peace before he knows the results of the November election in the United States.
The West, Putin said, had failed to understand the extent of the changes ushered in by the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which he said had removed any genuine ideological basis for a confrontation between Russia and the West.
“I really did have a naive impression,” Putin, a former KGB spy who rose to power in 1999, said of his impressions of the world in 2000.
“The reality is that after the fall of the Soviet Union, they considered that they just had to wait for a bit to completely destroy Russia,” Putin said.
Putin casts the war as part of a much bigger struggle with the United States, which the Kremlin elite says aims to cleave Russia apart, grab its vast natural resources and then turn to settling scores with China.
The West, which presents Russia and China as its main threats, says it has no plan to destroy Russia. Ukraine says it will not rest until every last Russian soldier is ejected from its territory.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday vowed to make Russia “sovereign and self-sufficient” in the face of the West, in his first campaign speech before a March vote to extend his long rule until at least 2030.
Putin will stand for a fifth Kremlin term in an election with no real opposition that will come just over two years since he launched the seismic Ukraine offensive.
The 71-year-old came to power in 2000, with a whole generation in Russia unable to remember life without him.
The vote will likely prolong his rule until at least 2030 and give him the possibility to stay in the Kremlin until 2036.
“We must remember and never forget and tell our children: Russia will be either a sovereign, self-sufficient state, or it will not be there at all,” Putin said during a congress of the ruling United Russia party.
Putin has said that he will make “sovereignty” — a loosely defined term — one of the key aims of his fifth term in the Kremlin.
“We will only make decisions ourselves without foreign advice from abroad,” Putin told United Russia members, to applause.
“Russia cannot — like some countries — give away its sovereignty for some sausage and become someone’s satellite,” he said, using a common Russian expression.
The United Russia party backed Putin’s candidacy unanimously, with party leaders and public figures making adoring speeches lending him support.
The party is headed by Dmitry Medvedev, who switched roles with Putin in 2008 to serve as president, before Putin returned to the Kremlin.
Medvedev has become one of the most hawkish figures in Russia during the Ukraine campaign.
The 2024 election will come as Moscow’s Ukraine campaign drags on for another winter, costing a high number of deaths on both sides, with criticism of the military operation banned in Russia.
– ‘Sow internal troubles’ –
Russia has said it is withstanding Western economic pressure.
Putin accused Western countries of wanting to “sow internal troubles” in Russia.
“But such tactics did not work,” he said.
The longtime Kremlin leader said “we still have a lot to do for the interests of Russia” and that the country faced “historic tasks.”
United Russia leaders and pro-Kremlin figures made speeches in support of Putin.
“There is not a single doubt that Putin should be leader in the hardest circumstances for our country,” Medvedev said, calling Western countries “dangerous and cynical enemies”.
A special forces commander of Ramzan Kadyrov’s brutal regime in Chechnya — Apti Alaudinov — said: “God gave us a leader.”
“We Russians, do not see ourselves without him,” he said.
The vote will take place amid a huge crackdown on dissent in Russia.
Putin’s main political opponent, Alexei Navalny, is serving a 19-year prison sentence.
His allies have sounded the alarm last week, saying they have not had no contact with him for ten days, believing he was moved to another prison.
His team says this was done to coincide with Putin’s campaign.
bur/rox
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Published: 17 Dec 2023, 09:46 PM IST
