A Quote by Vladimir Putin

The nationalists' coup in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev in February 2014 has hugely scared 2.5 million Russian people living on Crimea. So what did we do? We have not gone to war, we have not fired, not a single person was killed. Our soldiers have merely prevented the Ukrainian troops on Crimea from impeding the freedom of expression of the people.
Crimea has always been and remains Russian, as well as Ukrainian, Crimean-Tatar, Greek (after all, there are Greeks living there) and German - and it will be home to all of those peoples. As for state affiliation, the people living in Crimea made their choice; it should be treated with respect, and Russia cannot do otherwise. I hope that our neighbouring and distant partners will ultimately treat this the same way, since in this case, the highest criteria used to establish the truth can only be the opinion of the people themselves.
End of the war would be when the Russian occupation troops leave Ukrainian territory and we close the uncontrolled part of the Russian-Ukrainian border.
I have never allowed anti-Russian rhetoric in Ukrainian policy toward such a strategic partner like Russia. This is the first point. I never went against the interests of the Ukrainian state and the Ukrainian people.
In Maidan Square right now, you see thousands of Ukrainians protesting the Russian occupation of Crimea. So this is a Russian protest by Ukrainians who want their sovereignty. They want their freedom and they're protesting what Russia did in Crimea.
There are complicated processes going on in society in the Crimea. There are problems of the Crimean Tatars, the Ukrainian population, the Russian population, the Slavic population in general, but this is Ukraine's domestic political problem.
I always lived in a multilingual society (Polish-Ukrainian, German-Ukrainian, English-Ukrainian), and was open to outside linguistic influences. I think it was within three years of coming to the US that I started writing in English, although purely for myself, not trying to get it published. Living in America, I was constantly in touch with English, and Ukrainian was for me a private language.
I remain convinced that for Stalin to have complete centralized power in his hands, he found it necessary to physically destroy the second-largest Soviet republic, meaning the annihilation of the Ukrainian peasantry, Ukrainian intelligentsia, Ukrainian language, and history as understood by the people; to do away with Ukraine and things Ukrainian as such. The calculation was very simple, very primitive: no people, therefore, no separate country, and thus no problem. Such a policy is Genocide in the classic sense of the word.
I hope that the responsible figures in the Ukrainian leadership will not hinder soldiers in the Ukrainian army from putting down their weapons.
Honoring the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, in which more than two million Ukrainian Jews died, Ukraine calls on Israel to also recognize the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.
I hope that the responsible figures in the Ukrainian leadership will not hinder soldiers in the Ukrainian army from putting down their weapons, if they aren't capable of taking that decision themselves and giving that order, then I hope that they won't prosecute people who want to save their lives and the lives of others.
Putin never wanted all of Ukraine. He wanted for historical purposes to take Crimea. He did. Then he wanted a part of Ukraine that he could always use to advance Russian interests. And he is now at a point where nobody in the West is shouting, hey, stop. Give us back Crimea. It's all accepted. And so he has won.
I condemn the entry of a Russian so-called humanitarian convoy into Ukrainian territory without the consent of the Ukrainian authorities and without any involvement of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The Ukrainian nation, as no other nation, understands and is fully aware of the tragedy and its scale of all the lost lives of the Ukrainian Jews during the Second World War.
The image of Russian troops pouring into Ukraine and encircling military units in Crimea has been a wake-up call that will reverberate for a generation.
Canada has the world's largest Ukrainian population outside of Ukraine and Russia. As a senator from Minnesota, a state with a large Ukrainian-American community, I understand how important it is that Canada works with us to stand up to Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Well, we have got to understand, for example, Russia is an orthodox Christian nation. So is Ukraine. That happened in 988 in Crimea, a place called Kievan Rus, which was the Russia around Kiev at that time. It's 1,000 years ago, but, to a Russian, it's yesterday.
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