Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday blamed the West for the conflict with Ukraine and the deterioration in relations since Russia sent its armed forces against its neighbor last year.
Putin received in a ceremony the credentials of 17 new ambassadors, including the United States and the European Union. He told US diplomat Lynne Tracy that it was US support for the 2014 Maidan revolution in Ukraine that has led to the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
"I know you may not agree, but I can't help but tell you that the US support for the so-called color revolutions, the support for the coup in Kyiv in 2014, has finally led to the current crisis in Ukraine." Putin said.
Following that revolution, Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and supported the separatist insurgency in Donbass.
He then told the EU ambassador in Moscow, Frenchman Roland Galharague, that it was the EU that "has started a geopolitical confrontation with Russia."
It was not the only forum in which the head of the Kremlin loaded the ink against the West yesterday. At a meeting of the Russian Security Council, Putin accused Ukraine of committing crimes against Russian proxies in the Ukrainian territories under his control, as well as in Russia itself. "There are many reasons to say that Western intelligence services are involved in such sabotage and acts of terrorism," he said.
Three days earlier, Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarski was killed in a bomb attack in Saint Petersburg.
