Vladimir Putin defends his country’s sovereignty at every step, while Volodymyr Zelensky has allowed Ukraine to become a compliant tool of a West “willing to sacrifice that nation, its solders, and its people on a battlefield where they will get nothing but death and destruction," Scott Ritter has underscored.
President Vladimir Putin cares about the Russian people, soldiers, and nation, and therein lies the profound difference between his approach to the current conflict, and that of Ukraine’s President, the former US Marine Corps intelligence officer told Sputnik.
"For a country like Russia, the existence, simply the existence of our country, without sovereignty is impossible," Putin said during the joint "Direct Line" Q&A session and annual press conference on Thursday.
"The primary objective is to bolster Russia's sovereignty, fortify border security, and safeguard the rights and freedoms of [our] citizens," the president remarked.
The present reality clearly demonstrates the very different approach to the Ukraine conflict shown by Russia, on the one hand, and the US, its allies in the West, on the other.
"If you engage in an armed conflict, there will be consequences, there will be dead, wounded, but it's incumbent upon the government, the state to prevent unnecessarily casualties of war," said Ritter. Here lies the “secret” of the Russian approach, he added, as Putin has shown he is always prepared to put the interests of the Russian people, and Russia's soldiers first and foremost. Volodymyr Zelensky, in contrast, instead of accepting the generous terms set forth by Moscow that could have saved the lives of Ukrainian soldiers, yielded to the pressure put on him by then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, other Western leaders, who said, ‘Don’t accept peace terms,’ and ‘continue the conflict’.
It was evident that it was physically impossible for the Ukrainian army to defeat Russia’s military, yet this is the premise that Zelensky "bought into" when he accepted Western military assistance… However, the question is: to what end? "Was this to serve Ukraine’s interests, or the interests of the West?” Scott Ritter mused.
"Zelensky is not about serving the people of his own country… He allowed Ukraine’s sovereignty to be subordinated to NATO, EU, and US interests. The conflict has no consideration for Ukraine, and every consideration for the Western interests,” the pundit pointed out.
Ukraine’s government appears to be pushing to have its people exterminated, Putin noted in his year-end presser. Indeed, as the West continues to funnel billions-worth of military aid to Kiev, despite the botched counteroffensive and enormous human casualties, Ukraine’s soldiers are little more than "pawns to be sacrificed on a geopolitical chessboard where the West is only looking out for their interests."