The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin denied this Tuesday plans to restore the Russian empire after the recognition of the separatist republics pro-Russian Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine.
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“He had anticipated that there would be speculation on that subject, that of the restoration of the Russian empire“Putin said during a meeting in Moscow with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliev. The Kremlin chief assured that these statements “do not correspond to reality at all”.
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He added that after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has accepted the new geopolitical reality and is working hard to promote its cooperation with the countries that have emerged in the post-Soviet space.
Ukraine and several eastern countries have accused Putin on Tuesday of wanting to revive the former Soviet Union, which disintegrated more than thirty years ago, in addition to showing their fear that Moscow will continue its attitude in other republics that belonged to that former superpower.
The Ukrainian Minister of Defense, Oleksii Reznikov said today that Russia took another step to revive the Soviet Union after the recognition of Donetsk and Lugansk and the sending of Russian troops to those territories in eastern Ukraine.
In a speech addressed to the Ukrainian Army, the Minister of Defense stated that Russia wants the rebirth of the USSR “with a new Warsaw Pact”, the military agreement created in response to NATO, and “a new Berlin Wall”.
For his part, the Polish Defense Minister, Mariusz Blaszczak called on Tuesday for “serious, not symbolic sanctions” against Moscowbecause according to him “only in this way will the ‘return of the Soviet empire’ be prevented.” Speaking to the press in Warsaw, the minister stressed that weak sanctions against Russia “will only make the aggressor more daring.”
Czech Defense Minister Jana Cernochova today also interpreted the Russian president’s decision to recognize the independence of the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk as an attempt to rebuild the former Soviet Union.EFE
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