“This is just nonsense”: Putin called nonsense the statements of NATO countries about the threat of attack from the Russian Federation

Vladimir Putin called the statements made in Western countries about Russia’s alleged plans to attack European countries nonsense and nonsense. The head of state stated this during a conversation with military pilots undergoing training at the 344th Center for Combat Use and Retraining of Flight Personnel of the Russian Ministry of Defense.

“We have no aggressive intentions towards these states,” the Russian President said. - This is complete nonsense, the possibility of an attack on some other countries, on Poland, the Baltic states, they also scare the Czechs there. Just nonsense, another way to deceive your population and extract additional expenses from people, force them to bear this burden on their shoulders. That's all".

He called it obvious that the West is intimidating its own population against the backdrop of a deteriorating economy and a decline in people’s living standards: “They need to justify themselves, so they scare their population with a possible “Russian threat,” and they themselves spread their dictatorship to the whole world.”

The head of state also drew attention to the noticeable difference in defense spending between Russia and the United States. According to the data he announced, in 2022 the Russian Federation spent $72 billion, and the United States spent $811 billion: “And, keeping in mind this ratio, are we going to fight with NATO, or what? This is just nonsense."

Also on russian.rt.com “Rhetoric of the Cold War”: how Russia responded to Poland’s accusation of preparing for an attack on NATO

Putin recalled that if the NATO bloc, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, as Russia proposed, had built completely new security relations in Europe, nothing like this would have happened now.

“We would simply take into account our interests in the field of security, which we have been talking about from year to year, in fact, from decade to decade. Just complete ignorance. We came right to our borders. Were we, perhaps, moving towards the borders of those countries that were part of the NATO bloc? We didn't touch anyone. They were moving towards us. Have we crossed the ocean to the borders of the United States? No, they are approaching us and have come close. What are we doing? We only protect our people in our historical territories. Therefore, what they say about the fact that we are going to attack Europe after Ukraine is complete nonsense,” Putin added.

According to him, Russia would not have launched a special operation in Ukraine if there had not been a coup in Kyiv, and then the Ukrainian Armed Forces would not have started military operations in the Donbass.

“They started the war in 2014. They just used aviation - everyone saw these shots when they hit Donetsk from planes. The peaceful city is being bombarded with missiles from the air. Are you completely crazy? Nevertheless, we still agreed to these Minsk agreements. No, it turns out that they deceived us, delayed us for eight years, and in the end they simply forced us to move on to another form of protecting our interests and our people,” explained the Russian President.

Answering a question about NATO countries’ plans to supply F-16 fighters to Ukraine, Putin stressed that this will not change the situation on the battlefield; Russian troops will continue to destroy enemy military equipment.

“Of course, if they are used from airfields of third countries, they become a legitimate target for us, no matter where they are. And the F-16s are also carriers of nuclear weapons, and we will also have to take this into account when organizing combat work,” he noted.

Concluding his conversation with military pilots, the President recalled that Russia is a multinational and multi-religious country. According to him, he feels a sense of anxiety when people in society begin to say: Russia is only for Russians.

"Why? Because if we keep in mind that we have 190 ethnic groups living on the territory of the country and some nationalities are represented by millions of peoples, then as soon as we begin to implement these destructive thoughts about the fact that everyone else is strangers here, we will ruin the country. And the main victims will be the Russian people. Therefore, you need to treat this component very adultly, seriously, not wave your arms and wag your tongue, but think when you pronounce every word, every phrase. To think that we have one big united Motherland,” Putin said, adding that it is necessary to take care of the unity of the Russian people.