Putin says West can't win war with Russia after Black Sea incident
US President Joe Biden meets with Vladimir Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin
has said an incident involving a British destroyer in the Black Sea
couldn't have triggered a global conflict even if Russia had sunk the
warship because the West knows it can't win such a war.
The tough statement appeared to indicate his resolve to raise the stakes should a similar incident happen again.
Speaking
in a marathon call-in show, Mr Putin also revealed that he received the
domestically produced Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine and urged Russians
to get vaccinated as the country battles a devastating surge of cases
and deaths amid widespread hesitancy to get the shot.
Mr
Putin was asked about the June 23 incident in the Black Sea, in which
Russia said one of its warships fired warning shots and a warplane
dropped bombs in the path of Britain's HMS Defender to force it from an
area near Crimea that Moscow claims as its territorial waters.
He said a US reconnaissance aircraft had joined what he described as a "provocation" to test Russia's response.
Britain,
which like most other nations does not recognise Russia's 2014
annexation of Crimea, insisted the Defender wasn't fired upon and said
it was sailing in Ukrainian waters.
"HMS
Defender was conducting innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial
waters in accordance with international law," Britain's Defense Ministry
said.
Asked if the events could have triggered a global war, Mr Putin responded that the West wouldn't risk a full-scale conflict.
"Even
if we had sunk that ship, it would be hard to imagine that it would put
the world on the brink of World War III because those who do it know
that they can't emerge as winners in that war, and it's very important,"
Mr Putin said.
The
statement followed Russian officials' warning that if a Western warship
enters the waters again, the military could fire on it.
Mr
Putin charged that the US reconnaissance aircraft that took off from
the Greek island of Crete was operating in concert with the British ship
on an apparent mission to monitor the Russian military's response to
the British destroyer.
"It
was clearly a provocation, a complex one involving not only the British
but also the Americans," he said, adding that Moscow was aware of the
US intentions and responded accordingly to avoid revealing sensitive
data.
Asked
about Mr Putin's claim, Navy Captain Wendy Snyder, the chief of public
affairs for the US European Command, said that "yes, we did have
aircraft in operations," but reaffirmed the Pentagon's earlier dismissal
of the Russian description of the incident as false.
"We are operating in and watching everything in the Black Sea region, as we always do," Captain Snyder said.
The
Russian leader specifically lamented that the incident closely followed
his summit with US President Joe Biden in Geneva last month.
"The world is undergoing a radical change," he said.
"Our
US partners realise that, and that's why the Geneva meeting took place.
But on the other hand, they are trying to secure their monopolist
stance, resulting in threats and destructive action such as drills,
provocations and sanctions."
Even
though the West doesn't recognise Crimea as part of Russia, Mr Putin
said the naval incident took the controversy to a new level.
"They don't recognise something — OK, they can keep refusing to recognise it," he said.
"But why conduct such provocations?"
Mr Putin insisted Russia would firmly defend its interests.
"We are fighting for ourselves and our future on our own territory," he said.
"It's
not us who traveled thousands of kilometres to come to them; it's them
who have come to our borders and violated our territorial waters."
Dmitri
Trenin, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, warned that last
week's Black Sea incident presages a new, riskier level of
confrontation.
"Fresh
attempts to expose Russian 'red line' deterrence as hollow - whether on
the ground, in the air, or at sea - would push Moscow to defend what it
cannot give up without losing its self-respect," Mr Trenin said in a
commentary.
Countries with the highest military expenditure in the world
"This
would almost inevitably lead to clashes and casualties, which would
carry the risk of further escalation. Should this happen, Russia-NATO
confrontation would deteriorate literally to the point of brinkmanship, a
truly bleak scenario."
Mr
Putin also reaffirmed his claim of a close kinship between the Russian
and Ukrainian people, but accused Kyiv of hostility toward Russia and
voiced doubt about the value of a meeting with Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, calling him a Western pawn.
"Why
meet Zelenskyy if he has put his country under full foreign control and
key issues for Ukraine are decided not in Kyiv but in Washington, and,
to a certain extent, Paris and Berlin?" Mr Putin asked.
Ukraine's
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba retorted by tweeting that Putin wishes
Ukraine's issues were decided in Moscow. "This is our country and it's
only up to us to decide our fate," he added.
Earlier
this year, Russia bolstered its forces near Ukraine and warned that
Moscow could intervene if Kyiv used force to reclaim areas in the east
controlled by Russia-backed separatists since a conflict there erupted
in 2014. Moscow later pulled back some troops, but Ukrainian authorities
said the bulk of them remain close to the border.
Mr Putin spent most of the four-hour Direct Line
show discussing domestic issues — typical for the tightly choreographed
annual rite that helps him polish his image as a strong leader caring
for people's needs.
It
didn't feature any questions about Russia's beleaguered opposition and
Putin's most prominent political foe, Alexei Navalny, who is in prison.
He
voiced hope the country could avoid a nationwide coronavirus lockdown
amid a surge of new infections. Reported deaths in Russia hit a daily
record Wednesday, with authorities reporting 669, but Mr Putin said
decisions by regional officials to make vaccinations mandatory for some
workers should help.
Russia
has been registering over 20,000 new coronavirus cases and about 600
deaths every day since June 24. On Wednesday, 21,042 new infections were
recorded.
Russian
officials blame the June surge on Russians' lax attitude toward taking
precautions, more infectious variants, and a low rate of vaccinations,
which experts attribute to widespread hesitancy to get the shot and
limited vaccine production.
Although
Russia was among the first countries to deploy a vaccine, just over 15
percent of the population has received at least one shot.
Amid
this hesitancy, Mr Putin revealed he received the Sputnik V vaccine. Mr
Putin got his first shot in late March out of the public eye and has
remained tight-lipped about which vaccine he chose.
On
other issues, Mr Putin said Russia has no intention of banning Western
social media platforms but emphasized that the government merely wants
them to abide by the law, promptly remove inappropriate content and open
offices in Russia.
"We
tell them: 'You're spreading child pornography, or instructions on (how
to commit) suicide, or how to create Molotov cocktails. ... You must
take it down,' and they simply don't listen, don't want to listen to
what we tell them," Mr Putin said.
"But this is wrong."
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