Putin Speaks: Blames U.S. for Trying to Tempt Russia into Invading Ukraine (Again)

Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Tuesday accused the United States of attempting to lure Russia into a war over Ukraine, and said President Joe Biden’s administration is ignoring Russia’s legitimate security concerns.

Putin’s news conference in Moscow with visiting Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban marked the Russian leader’s first public comments on the Ukraine situation in six weeks. Putin repeated many of the same allegations and arguments advanced by his emissaries and officials, including an echo of Russian U.N. Ambassador Vasily Nebenzia accusing the U.S. of wanting war at a stormy U.N. Security Council session yesterday.

Putin claimed Russia seeks only to defend itself against an aggressive United States and its NATO allies, who he accused of scheming to induct Ukraine into NATO so they can provoke a war with Russia by attempting to reverse the Crimean peninsula’s 2014 annexation by Moscow.

“Let’s imagine Ukraine is a NATO member and starts these military operations. Are we supposed to go to war with the NATO bloc? Has anyone given that any thought? Apparently not,” Putin said of his hypothetical Crimean gambit.

Putin said Ukraine is just an “instrument” to achieve Washington’s goal of containing Russia.

“This can be done in different ways, by drawing us into some kind of armed conflict and, with the help of their allies in Europe, forcing the introduction against us of those harsh sanctions they are talking about now in the U.S.,” he said.

For his part, Hungarian Prime Minister Orban said at the same press conference that he believed a compromise could be reached between Russia and NATO that would avert conflict.

“I got convinced today that the existing differences in positions can be bridged and it is possible to sign an agreement that would guarantee peace, guarantee Russia’s security and is acceptable for NATO member states as well,” Orban said.

The U.S. State Department said on Wednesday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to begin reversing Russia’s immense military buildup on the Ukrainian border, if Russia wants to de-escalate the situation and pursue diplomacy instead.

“If President Putin truly does not intend war or regime change, the Secretary told Foreign Minister Lavrov then this is the time to pull back troops and heavy weaponry and engage in a serious discussion,” a senior State Department official said.

The Pentagon said on Wednesday that about 3,000 U.S. troops will move into Eastern Europe to counter Putin’s buildup on the Ukrainian border. Some of the American troops will be relocated from bases in Germany, while others will be sent overseas from Ft. Bragg in North Carolina. The troops heading eastward will be temporarily based in Romania and Poland.

“There may soon be additional posture decisions to announce, including movements that are a part of ongoing military exercises. This is not the sum total of the deterrence actions we will take, or those to reassure our allies,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.