Setting free the people of Donbass from the "genocide" being waged against them is the main goal of the Russian special operation in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated during an address in Luzhniki Stadium.
"[The Donbass residents], who did not agree with the [2014] coup [in Kiev], were immediately hit with punitive military operations. A blockade was immediately put in place against these people. They were subjected to systematic shelling, air strikes. This is what is called 'genocide'".
Putin went on to add that the demilitarisation and de-Nazification of Ukraine will be carried out and all "war criminals" responsible for the bloodshed in Donbass, will be punished. He clarified that it was the only way to stop the "genocide" there.
The Russian president ordered the start of the special operation in Ukraine on 24 February following a request from the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR) to protect them from attacks by Ukrainian forces and nationalist battalions. Putin stated that Russia was left with no other choice but to intervene to help the newly-recognised Donbass republics. He described the goals of the operation as the demilitarisation and de-Nazification of Ukraine and vowed that the Russian armed forces will only be targeting military objectives.
The Kremlin has also repeatedly rejected claims by foreign governments and media outlets that the operation was a Russian "invasion" stressing that Russian troops do not have a goal of seizing Ukraine and only seek to disarm it and eliminate the nationalist threat. Despite this, nations in the West slapped Russia with the harshest economic sanctions to date, targeting the banking and energy sectors of the economy, as well as the Central Bank and illegally freezing Russia's foreign reserves.