MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday told the new US and EU ambassadors in blunt language that their countries were responsible for a dramatic deterioration in relations since Russia sent its armed forces into Ukraine last year.
Putin told new US ambassador Lynne Tracy that US support for a revolution in Ukraine in 2014 had led to the current situation where Russia and Ukraine were in conflict.
“Dear Madam Ambassador, I know you may not agree, but I cannot but say that the United States’ use… of such tools as support for the so-called colour revolutions, support in this regard for the coup in Kyiv in 2014, ultimately led to today’s Ukrainian crisis,” Putin said.
He said relations were in “a deep crisis” that was “based on fundamentally different approaches to the formation of the modern world order”.
Russia responded to an uprising in Kyiv that drove out a pro-Russian President in 2014 by seizing the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine and backing an armed separatist movement that took control of territory in eastern Ukraine. Putin took a similar line with the new EU ambassador, Roland Galharague, who took up his position in September, telling him that “the European Union initiated a geopolitical confrontation with Russia”.