MOSCOW, November 3. /TASS/. Russia had to "unholster the rifle," as it had already been attacked by the time it started the special military operation, President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with members of the Civic Chamber.
"Before deciding to unholster the automatic rifle you must to stop to think: can this be avoided? No, unfortunately, that could not have been avoided," he said. "Why? Because we had already been attacked," Putin said, noting that Russian people had historically lived in the Russian territories of Donbass.
He pointed out that the subsequent events showed that the residents of these territories had originally considered themselves as part of Russia.
"But they were attacked in 2014. First, there was an attempt to attack Crimea, and then Donbass. For eight years we moved towards settling this situation by peaceful means," Putin said. He recalled that this proposal was rejected. "The opponents refused. They refused publicly. ‘We won't,’ they said. ‘We don't like the Minsk agreements.’ And what will we be doing? We are going to keep pounding on and on. Well, we were forced to take action to put an end to this at some point. This is what we are striving for. This dictates everything," he concluded.