ST. PETERSBURG, January 26. /TASS/. Russia spent years building peaceful relations with Ukraine only to see Moscow’s geopolitical opponents destroy these efforts, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with students who are taking part in the special military operation.

"We went to great lengths to build our relations with Ukraine over decades. We did everything we could, including giving favorable loans, providing energy resources at the dumping price and access to our market," Putin said. "We built bilateral relations very patiently, relying on the pro-Russian part of Ukrainian society, and of course, using only peaceful means, as we had no other thoughts."

"However, it looks as if our geopolitical opponent realized that it would not be easy to turn all of Ukraine upside down with the Russian-speaking population being in the southeast," the president said, describing the outbreak of the 2014 state coup in Kiev.

"[The West] vigorously pursued the establishment of an anti-Russian platform on the territory that is called Ukraine today. They simply began to create such an enclave. They deceived [us], deceived a dozen times in a row about NATO enlargement. All this together left us no chance," the president concluded.