The tragedy associated with the events in Ukraine began in 2014 and began with the anti-constitutional, anti-state armed coup in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with veterans of the Great Patriotic War, residents of the besieged Leningrad and representatives of public patriotic associations.

"As we know, this required us to provide assistance to the Crimeans. Then came the events in Donbass. And, in fact, full-scale hostilities in the Donbass have not stopped since 2014 - with the use of heavy equipment, artillery, tanks and aircraft. All this has been going on.

Everything we are doing today, including the special military operation, is, as I have said many times, an attempt to stop this war. That's the point of our operation. And to protect our people who live there, in those territories. These are our historical territories. As I said before, after the break up of the Soviet Union... I will not give an assessment now, this is not the time or place, but at any rate Russia has reconciled itself to this event, despite the fact that these are our historical territories, Russian, but we have reconciled ourselves historically. Nevertheless, we couldn't help reacting to what started happening there after the coup d'état, when they started, in fact, exterminating people who live in these territories just for the fact that they consider themselves connected to Russian culture, to the Russian language and to the traditions of their people and their ancestors.

We have been patient for a long time, we tried to come to an agreement for a long time. As it turns out now, they were just leading us around by the nose, deceiving us. Well, it is not the first time this has happened to us. Nevertheless, we did our best to resolve the situation peacefully. It has now become obvious that this was by definition impossible, just that the enemy was preparing to take this whole conflict into a sharp and heated phase. I repeat, there was nothing left for us to do but what we are doing now," he said.