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19 May 2022, 20:08Putin's decision on Ukraine operation 'moral choice,' not geopolitics - top Kremlin official
Moscow, May 19, Interfax - The decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to launch a special military operation in Ukraine was based chiefly on moral principles rather than geopolitics, Sergey Kiriyenko, first deputy head of the presidential administration, said.
"I am absolutely certain that the decision our president made on February 24 was circumscribed first and foremost not by geopolitical issues, though, certainly, NATO approaching the Russian borders is our country's most important security problem. It is a geopolitical problem. But it seems to me that the choice was moral-ethical: we don't abandon our own [people], we don't abandon people who defend their right to be Russians and to be Russian," Kiriyenko told the New Horizons educational marathon on Thursday.
"It was this principled internal choice from which begins all that is happening to us in this life," he said.
Eight years ago, the people of Donbas "could have also decided that this had nothing to do with them, and move to another territory. But a vast number of people decided that it was their business, this was their land which their fathers and grandfathers had defended, and that they would fight for their right to be Russian. Suddenly it transpired eight years ago that one had to fight for this right, and in this particular instance being Russian is not an ethnicity - there are various ethnicities living there - [but] rather, a cultural identity, the Russian culture, the Russian language. And it was their choice," Kiriyenko said.
"And that was the choice of President Putin when he had to make the decision [to launch the operation]," he said. |
