MOSCOW, June 14. /TASS/. Ukraine needed the Bucha provocation in the spring of 2022 to explain its rejection of agreements with Russia, despite the fact that the parties had previously managed to reach mutually beneficial solutions during negotiations, President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with the Foreign Ministry’s senior staff.
"On March 29, 2022, we withdrew our troops from Kiev because we were assured that it was necessary to create the necessary conditions for the completion of the political negotiation process and that it was impossible for one of the parties to sign such agreements <…>. We agreed. But immediately, the day after the withdrawal of Russian troops from Kiev, the Ukrainian leadership suspended its participation in the negotiation process and staged a well-known provocation in Bucha. And it abandoned the prepared version of the agreements. I think today it is clear why this dirty provocation was necessary: to somehow explain the rejection of the results achieved during the negotiations. The path to peace has been rejected once again," Putin said.
The Russian leader noted that during the 2022 talks, the countries managed to resolve even tough issues, laying down a preliminary agreement that both sides were satisfied with.
Russia now sees that the decision to abandon the talks was made "on instructions from Western handlers," Putin added. They, including the UK, insisted on the need to inflict a "strategic defeat" on Russia, and began to "pump Ukraine with weapons," the leader recalled. Later, the Ukrainian president issued a decree banning his representatives and even himself from negotiating with Moscow.