Putin’s war claims dismissed by Sunak

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has dismissed President Putin’s claim to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the West started the war in Ukraine.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin gives an interview to US talk show host Tucker Carlson at the Kremlin in Moscow.

President Putin’s claim that the West started the war in Ukraine was “clearly ridiculous”, Rishi Sunak said yesterday (Friday) after the Russian leader gave his first interview to a western journalist since the invasion began.

Putin used the two-hour interview with the American Tucker Carlson to claim that the war began with a CIA-orchestrated coup to remove the pro-Russian President Yanukovych in 2014, among other contested claims.

In the interview released online on Thursday Putin also said that Evan Gershkovich, the detained Wall Street Journal reporter, was caught “red-handed” spying in Russia - which the journalist denies.

Putin also said Ukraine’s move towards Nato membership forced Russia to invade in 2022 and the war would end in weeks if the West stopped sending weapons to Kyiv.

Sunak dismissed the claims. “Russia conducted an illegal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine,” he said. “I’m proud that the UK has stood strongly with Ukraine from the beginning.”

Here The Times examines some of the Russian leader’s other disputed assertions.

Putin’s interview with Carlson has been widely condemned by world leaders.

The West reneged on a deal not to enlarge NatoDuring negotiations with the former president Mikhail Gorbachev over the unification of Germany in 1990, James Baker, then the US secretary of state, tried to allay Soviet fears of a Nato presence in the former Soviet-controlled East Germany by suggesting the alliance would not expand “one inch eastward”.

Putin argues this was a wider assurance not to enlarge Nato, whereas western academics say the idea applied to Germany and was soon dropped by George Bush Sr when he was president. The final settlement on German unification, ratified by the Soviet Union, had no prohibition on Nato adding members.

The overthrow of Yanukovych was a CIA-instigated coupAfter months of protests against Yanukovych in February 2014 bugged phone calls recorded US officials openly discussing which Ukrainian opposition figures should be in power. Yanukovych fled Kyiv two weeks later after signing an agreement with the opposition to bring about a unity government. Protesters had clashed with Yanukovych’s security forces before his exit. No evidence of CIA involvement has been presented.

Kyiv started the war in eastern UkrainePutin said: “They [the Ukrainians] launched a war in Donbas in 2014 with the use of aircraft and artillery against civilians.” In reality, pro-Moscow rallies broke out in Donbas in 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea. Administration buildings were stormed before Igor Girkov, a former Russian intelligence officer, brought militants from Crimea to fight the authorities. Ukrainian officials launched an operation to quell the unrest. The conflict flared into a war with both sides using heavy weapons. Russia sent troops and tanks in support of the separatists.

Ukraine and the West were to blame for peace talks failing in March-April 2022 Peace negotiators met in Istanbul less than a month after Putin’s invasion began but how close they came to a deal is disputed. An inquiry by The Wall Street Journal this month found that Ukraine had shown flexibility on its aspiration to join Nato as well as Russian demands to reduce its military and freeze discussions over Crimea. Putin claims he withdrew troops from around Kyiv when a deal was all but agreed because France and Germany said Ukraine couldn’t sign with “a gun to its head”.

Ukraine says the withdrawal was forced on Putin by battlefield losses and a binding agreement was not close. The massacre of civilians in Bucha then removed any desire to negotiate.

Boris Johnson demanded that Kyiv abandon negotiations with RussiaPutin claimed that Ukraine “obeyed the demand or persuasion” of Johnson, after he advised Kyiv in April 2022 that it was “better to fight Russia” than continue peace talks. Johnson recently told The Times it was “total nonsense” that he had scuppered a peace deal, but admitted: “I thought that any deal with Putin was going to be pretty sordid.” He says he told President Zelensky it was up to Kyiv to set its objectives but “Putin must fail” and the UK was ready to back Ukraine “a thousand per cent”. Zelensky hardened his position, demanding a full withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine, including Crimea, and the UK began to provide weapons to Kyiv.

Ukraine requires “de-Nazification"Far-right and neo-Nazi groups and militia have played a role in Ukraine. Stepan Bandera - a wartime Ukrainian nationalist who collaborated with the Nazis and remains a divisive figure - is a historical hero to some. In the present conflict a brigade named Azov with neo-Nazi roots also participates in resisting Russia’s advance. The brigade says now, however, it is neither racist nor fascist.

Such groups are peripheral, however. Zelensky is Jewish and a coalition of nationalist, right-wing parties took only 2.15 per cent of the vote at elections in 2019.

THE TIMES