Russia will not allow Ukraine to develop a nuclear weapon, Russian President Vladimir Putin said when he received the leaders of the press agencies of the BRICS countries in Moscow on Friday.
He said Russia could track if the British or anyone else were to hand over nuclear weapons to Kiev. He pointed out that it is not difficult to create a nuclear weapon in the modern world, but voiced his opinion that “it is not so easy for today’s Ukraine.”
“We will respond appropriately to any steps in this direction,” warned the Russian president.
He described Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s statement that Ukraine must either be a NATO member or seek to create nuclear weapons as another provocation. At a press conference in Istanbul on Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the members of the Ukrainian leadership “crazy” because of their nuclear ambitions and said that “nothing will come of it, never and under no circumstances.”
By the way, Ukraine is not thinking about developing nuclear weapons, and Zelensky’s statement was interpreted incorrectly in recent reports on the issue, the head of the Ukrainian presidential office said on Friday.
“We didn’t think about nuclear weapons, we reject that,” stated Andrij Jermak.
Putin claims that Russia is interested in ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible. Moscow would negotiate with Kyiv, but only if they use a document initialed in Istanbul in the spring of 2022 as a basis. He said the West understood that Russia could not be defeated, and claimed that Moscow wanted long-term peace.
“We need long-term, sustainable and lasting peace conditions that provide equal security to all participants in this difficult process,” Putin said.
The Russian president also announced that he will not travel to the G20 summit in Brazil in November. He also touched on the fact that the National Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against the Russian president for the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia. He noted that the ICC’s jurisdiction is not universal and its decisions can easily be gamed.
Putin expressed Russia’s readiness to participate in the settlement of the conflict between Israel and Iran, if the parties involved are interested in doing so. He believed that the United States should think about the fact that sanctions against Russia have a negative effect on the dollar, and that the attempt to curb China’s development has a negative effect on the American economy itself. According to his reasoning, Russia does not seek to rearrange the world, the formation of new power centers is a natural process.
Source: nepszava.hu
