Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday stated that the country’s very existence as a state was at stake in the conflict in Ukraine.
Putin went into great detail with workers at an aviation industry in Buryatia, expanding on his well-known claim that the West was determined to rip Russia apart.
“So for us, this is not a geopolitical task, but a task of the survival of Russian statehood, creating conditions for the future development of the country and our children,” he said.
Putin claimed that the West was waging war on Russia and handing it a geopolitical loss by using Ukraine as a weapon.
He said the enemy had been expecting that factories would grind to a halt, the banking system would fail, unemployment would soar, demonstrators would come to the streets, and Russia would “sway from within and collapse”.
Putin said. “It turned out, for many of us, and even more so for Western countries, that the fundamental foundations of Russia’s stability are much stronger than anyone thought.”
