Russian President Putin said Wednesday that an event involving a British destroyer within the Black Sea couldn’t have triggered a worldwide conflict albeit Russia had sunk the warship because the West knows it can’t win such a war.
The tough statement seemed to indicate his resolve to boost the stakes should an identical incident happen again.
Speaking during a marathon call-in show, Putin also revealed that he received the domestically produced Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine and urged Russians to urge vaccinated because the country battles a devastating surge of cases and deaths amid widespread hesitancy to urge the shot.
Putin was asked about the Midsummer Eve incident within the Black Sea , during which Russia said one among its warships fired warning shots and a warplane dropped bombs within the path of Britain’s HMS Defender to force it from a neighborhood near Crimea that Moscow claims as its body of water . He said a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft had joined what he described as a “provocation” to check Russia’s response.
Britain, which like most other nations didn’t recognize Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, insisted the Defender wasn’t fired upon and said it had been sailing in Ukrainian waters. “HMS Defender was conducting innocent passage through Ukrainian body of water in accordance with law of nations ,” Britain’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday.
Asked if the events could have triggered a worldwide war, Putin responded that the West wouldn’t risk a full-scale conflict.
“Even if we had sunk that ship, it might be hard to imagine that it might put the planet on the brink of war III because those that roll in the hay know that they can’t emerge as winners therein war, and it’s vital ,” Putin said. The statement followed Russian officials’ warning that if a Western warship enters the waters again, the military could fire thereon .
Putin charged that the U.S. reconnaissance aircraft that took faraway from the Greek island of Crete was operating together with British ship on a clear mission to watch the Russian military’s response to British destroyer.
“It was clearly a provocation, a posh one involving not only British but also the Americans,” he said, adding that Moscow was conscious of the U.S. intentions and responded accordingly to avoid revealing sensitive data.
Asked about Putin’s claim, Navy Capt. Wendy Snyder, the chief of public affairs for the U.S. European Command, said that “yes, we did have aircraft in operations,” but reaffirmed the Pentagon’s earlier dismissal of the Russian description of the incident as false.
“We are operating in and watching everything within the Black Sea region, as we always do,” Snyder said.
The Russian leader specifically lamented that the incident closely followed his summit with U.S. President Joe Biden in Geneva this month.
“The world is undergoing a radical change,” he said. “Our U.S. partners realize that, and that is why the Geneva meeting happened . But on the opposite hand, they’re trying to secure their monopolist stance, leading to threats and destructive action like drills, provocations and sanctions.”
Even though the West doesn’t recognize Crimea as a part of Russia, Putin said the naval incident took the controversy to a replacement level.
“They don’t recognize something — OK, they will keep refusing to acknowledge it,” he said. “But why conduct such provocations?”
Putin insisted Russia would firmly defend its interests.
“We are fighting for ourselves and our future on our own territory,” he said. “It’s not us who traveled thousands of kilometers (miles) to return to them; it’s them who have come to our borders and violated our body of water .”
Dmitri Trenin, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, warned that last week’s Black Sea incident presages a replacement , riskier level of confrontation.
“Fresh attempts to show Russian ‘red line’ deterrence as hollow — whether on the bottom , within the air, or stumped — would push Moscow to defend what it cannot hand over without losing its self-respect,” Trenin said during a commentary. “This would almost inevitably cause clashes and casualties, which might carry the danger of further escalation. Should this happen, Russia-NATO confrontation would deteriorate literally to the purpose of brinkmanship, a very bleak scenario.”
Putin on Wednesday also reaffirmed his claim of an in depth kinship between the Russian and Ukrainian people, but accused Kyiv of hostility toward Russia and voiced doubt about the worth of a gathering with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, calling him a Western pawn.
“Why meet Zelenskyy if he has put his country under full foreign control and key issues for Ukraine are decided not in Kyiv but in Washington, and, to a particular extent, Paris and Berlin?” Putin asked.
Ukraine’s secretary of state Dmytro Kuleba retorted by tweeting that Putin wishes Ukraine’s issues were decided in Moscow. “This is our country and it’s only up to us to make a decision our fate,” he added.
Earlier this year, Russia bolstered its forces near Ukraine and warned that Moscow could intervene if Kyiv used force to reclaim areas within the east controlled by Russia-backed separatists since a conflict there erupted in 2014. Moscow later pulled back some troops, but Ukrainian authorities said the majority of them remain on the brink of the border.
Putin spent most of the four-hour “Direct Line” show discussing domestic issues — typical for the tightly choreographed annual rite that helps him polish his image as a robust leader caring for people’s needs. It didn’t feature any questions on Russia’s beleaguered opposition and Putin’s most prominent political foe, Alexei Navalny, who is in prison.
He voiced hope the country could avoid a nationwide coronavirus lockdown amid a surge of latest infections. Reported deaths in Russia hit a daily record Wednesday, with authorities reporting 669, but Putin said decisions by regional officials to form vaccinations mandatory for a few workers should help.
Russia has been registering over 20,000 new coronavirus cases and about 600 deaths a day since Midsummer Day . On Wednesday, 21,042 new infections were recorded.
Russian officials blame the June surge on Russians’ lax attitude toward taking precautions, more infectious variants, and a coffee rate of vaccinations, which experts attribute to widespread hesitancy to urge the shot and limited vaccine production. Although Russia was among the primary countries to deploy a vaccine, just over 15% of the population has received a minimum of round .
Amid this hesitancy, Putin revealed he received the Sputnik V vaccine. Putin got his first shot in late debouch of the general public eye and has remained tight-lipped about which vaccine he chose.
On other issues, Putin said Russia has no intention of banning Western social media platforms but emphasized that the govt merely wants them to abide by the law, promptly remove inappropriate content and open offices in Russia.
“We tell them: ‘You’re spreading kiddie porn , or instructions on (how to commit) suicide, or the way to create Molotov cocktails. … you want to take it down,’ and that they simply don’t listen, don’t want to concentrate to what we tell them,” Putin said. “But this is often wrong.”