ASHGABAT, June 30. /TASS/. The West is using Ukraine as an instrument to achieve its own goals and implement their imperial ambitions, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.
"The call on Ukraine to continue combat operations and the call for refusing from talks only prove our suggestion that Ukraine is not a goal and the interests of the Ukrainian people are not the goal for the West and NATO. It is an instrument used to protect their own interests," he told a news conference after the Caspian summit.
"It means that NATO, NATO’s leading nations simply want to assert themselves, to assert their role in the world, not their leadership, but their hegemony in the direct sense of thee word, their imperial ambitions. That’s all," he said.
"The fact that they have always stressed their exceptional nature, imposed on the world community the thesis that who is not with us is against us is the manifestation of the same policy. There is nothing new for us in that," Putin stressed.
He recalled that Ukraine "has behaved with Russia worse in recent time." "First we reached some agreement and then they deviated from what they agreed," he added.