MADRID, March 2. /TASS/. Madrid has decided to deliver offensive weapons to Ukraine, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Wednesday in a speech to the Congress of Deputies (the lower house of parliament).

"Spain will supply the Ukrainian resistance with offensive military weapons," the prime minister said, "We must give a European response to a European threat."

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a televised address on February 24 that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in order to protect people "who have been suffering from abuse and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years." The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories.

Russia’s Defense Ministry reported later that Russian troops were not delivering strikes against Ukrainian cities. It emphasized that Ukrainian military infrastructure was being destroyed by precision weapons. Civilians are not threatened, the Russian military assured.