On February 15, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin hosted a Kremlin meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who arrived from Ukraine to call for peace.
Speaking at a joint news conference with Scholz after their meeting, Putin said Russia does not want war in Europe, and he blamed his country’s ongoing military escalation on the United States, NATO, and Ukraine.
“Opportunities to peacefully restore the territorial integrity of the country through direct dialogue with Donetsk and Luhansk are still ignored,” he said, referring to territories in eastern Ukraine where Moscow instigated armed conflict in 2014. Russia has since sustained the conflict there by providing pro-Russian forces with arms and leadership.
Putin’s claim that dialogue has been “ignored” is false.
Alexander Vershbow, a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C, and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia (2001-2005), described Putin’s statement as “standard Russian propaganda.”
“These distortions are aimed at convincing Russian domestic audiences, and less well-informed people in other countries, that Ukraine is to blame for the current impasse,” Vershbow said.
Steven Pifer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine (1998-2000), told Polygraph.info that Putin's claim “simply does not comport with reality.”
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