President Vladimir Putin on Thursday reiterated his position that Russia did not start the war in Ukraine but launched what it calls a “special military operation” to try to stop it.
In his yearly speech to the Valdai Discussion Club, being held in Sochi, Putin said Russia, the world’s largest country by area, had no need to take territory from Ukraine.
He said the conflict was not therefore imperial or territorial but about the global order, and that the West, which had lost its hegemonic power and always needed an enemy, had lost touch with reality.
Bombs, missiles and artillery rounds.
The war started with long range weaponry so in a very strict and literal sense it’s quite possible that Ukraine started defending itself before a single bullet was fired.
The previous commenter’s imaginary universe might’ve actually crossed paths with reality by mere chance, a sort of propagand equivalente of “if you have an infinite number of monkeys typing a typewritters you’ll end up with the complete works of Shakespear”, i.e. “with enough derranged rambling, some of it might actually and by chance coincide with reality”.