Putin: Russia is facing a major threat, and it is considering recognizing eastern Ukraine

Vladimir PutinPhoto: Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

Russia is facing “a serious and very big threat” in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin said on Monday.

“The use of Ukraine as an instrument of confrontation with our country poses a serious and very great threat to us,” Putin said when he convened the Russian Security Council at short notice on Monday afternoon.

At the same time, he emphasized that Moscow’s main priority “is not confrontation, but security.”

According to Putin, the Security Council is also discussing the Duma’s proposal to recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk separatist-controlled areas of eastern Ukraine as independent.

Since 2014, the two breakaway regions have been controlled by Russian-backed separatists, who have been at war with Ukrainian government forces for almost eight years.

Conflict

More than 14,000 people have been killed, and much of what was once Ukraine’s most important industrial region has been reduced to rubble.

On Monday, Luhansk separatist leader Leonid Pasechnik called on Putin to recognize the breakaway region as an independent republic in a video broadcast on Russian television.

Denis Pushilin, the leader of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk, made a similar appeal.

The Kremlin has previously expressed some skepticism about recognizing the two breakaway regions and has pointed out that such a decision would “burry” the Minsk agreement from 2015.

Source : © NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today / #NorwayTodayNews

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