BELGRADE, September 19. /TASS/. The West has been behaving brazenly in Ukraine for years, Russia was forced to react in order to save people in Donbass, Serb member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Milorad Dodik said in an interview with TASS on the eve of his visit to Moscow.
"For many years the West did not react to the extermination of the Russian population in Ukraine, there were daily murders and bombings in Donbass. The West had prepared an offensive against Lugansk and Donetsk with Ukrainian forces, trained their units, and sent a significant number of its own mercenaries. All this was clear, and Russia was forced to retaliate. But the way it does it is very different from the way the Americans have done it in many parts of the world, not counting civilian casualties. Russia is conducting a special operation whose purpose is indeed to destroy the enemy, but it carries out its mission so that there are as few casualties as possible," Dodik specified.
The politician recalled Russian President Vladimir Putin's Munich speech, which was not taken seriously by the West. "We all remember President Putin's warning at the Munich Conference that Russia cannot look calmly at the approach to its borders and will never allow it. All those long-standing warnings were not taken seriously. But it is here (in Europe - TASS) the West can behave impudently with us, the Serbs, cut off oil, impose sanctions, but Russia is a different story, this impudence will not go well with it. Russia had to retaliate," he insisted.
On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a special military operation in Ukraine following a request for assistance from the leaders of the Donbass republics. After that, the US, the EU, the UK, as well as a number of other countries imposed sanctions against Russian individuals and legal entities. In addition, Western countries began to supply arms and military equipment to Kiev worth billions of dollars at this stage.