NOVO-OGARYOVO, November 25. /TASS/. Russia used to live by someone else’s rules, an is going through a purge now, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday.

"What happened in the previous years was largely because we played, lived by someone else’s rules. The events of today are a path to some internal purging and reinvention," he said as he met with the mothers of the servicemen that participate in the special military operation.

He said in the 1990s and the 2000s "it seemed to us everything would be okay, but it wasn’t so."

"Moreover, we started to live and play by someone else’s rules and we took a delight in the fact that someone was trying to control us," Putin said.

He said "ultimately those who tried to control us - it’s thanks to their efforts, by and large, that we ended up in that situation, including in the zone of the special military operation."

"They pushed us to do this," the president said.

He said "nothing would have happened" if it hadn’t been for the coup in Ukraine in 2014 that toppled the government in that country.