MOSCOW, December 9. /TASS/. Western nations have turned Ukraine into a colony and are exploiting Ukrainians as cannon fodder and a battering ram against Russia, President Vladimir Putin said in a video address to the audience of SCO and CIS defense chiefs on Friday.
"Over the course of many years, the West has been unceremoniously exploiting and draining its [Ukrainian] resources, supported genocide and terror in Donbass, while essentially turning this country into a colony and shamelessly using the Ukrainian people today as cannon fodder and a battering ram against Russia by supplying Ukraine with weapons and ammo, sending mercenaries there and pushing it towards a suicidal path," Putin stressed.
The Russian president noted that the ongoing developments in Ukraine show the repercussions of Washington’s drive to cling to its global dominance at any cost.
"I am convinced that the nature and scale of the present-day threats place greater demands on our interaction through defense agencies," he said addressing the participants of the meeting.
According to the Russian leader, it is necessary to work together to shape a more flexible and stable system of security and cooperation, which could be suitable to the current challenges.
Putin stressed that such a system "should be based not on some kind of mythical unwritten rules, which no one ever saw, nor on somebody’s dominance and monopolism, but only on international law and respect for mutual interests."