The United States wants to subdue Moscow, but will never succeed, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday. “They do not want to humiliate us, they want to subdue us, solve their problems at our expense,” Putin said at the end of a four-hour meeting with his core support group, the People’s Front. “No one in history ever managed to achieve this with Russia, and no one ever will,” he said.
During the meeting, Putin repeatedly urged Russian firms, including in the agricultural and defense sectors, to boost their sales on domestic markets following tit-for-tat sanctions with West triggered by the row over Ukraine.
NATO leader denounced ‘serious military buildup’ in Ukraine
Meanwhile, NATO was keeping an eye on Russia’s moves on Ukraine. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg denounced on Tuesday what he called a serious Russian military buildup both inside Ukraine and on the Russian side of the border and urged Moscow to pull back its troops, Reuters informs.
Russia denied similar accusations last week by NATO’s top military commander, U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, who said NATO had spotted military equipment arriving from Russia in regions of east Ukraine held by pro-Russian separatist rebels.
Moreover, NATO F-16s intercepted a Russian Su-27 fighter jet over the Baltic Sea, near Latvian territorial waters on Monday.