MOSCOW, March 30. /TASS/. The head of the Russian delegation in the talks with Ukraine, Presidential Aide Vladimir Medinsky on Wednesday said Russia was forced to start an operation in Ukraine because there’s irrefutable proof that Kiev was preparing for an offensive in Donbass.
"There is incontrovertible evidence that Kiev was planning to launch an offensive against Donbass in the near future, and then Russia would have had to stand up for tens and tens of thousands of our Russian citizens living there anyway," he said on Rossiya-24 television. "In these conditions, Russia was forced to start a special military operation."
Medinsky said that since the 2014 coup in Ukraine, Russia has proposed talks and agreements that would have guaranteed the security of Ukraine and protected Russia's national interests. "All these demands were ignored for years, while NATO was building an anti-Russian foothold in Ukraine," he said. "Ukraine's joining NATO and the establishment of NATO military bases on its territory seemed to be a mission accomplished."
Medinsky said it has been proved that there was "focused work to create biological weapons" in Ukraine. Also, "the issue of whether Ukraine should acquire nuclear weapons was raised publicly," he said. In addition, "for all these years, the Kiev regime has been carrying out an outright genocide against the residents of Donbass," the negotiator said. "There is no end of evidence of this."
On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation in response to a request for help by the heads of the Donbass republics. He stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, but aims to demilitarize and de-Nazify the country. The Russian Defense Ministry said that Russian troops are not targeting Ukrainian cities, but are incapacitating Ukrainian military infrastructure, so there’s no threat to civilians.