Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the Ukraine crisis arose because of a “coup” in Kyiv in 2014, which, he said, was “provoked by the West,” adding that Western attempts to draw the country into NATO further escalated tensions. “This crisis did not arise as a result of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, but as a result of the coup d’etat in Ukraine, which was supported and provoked by the West, and then by attempts to use armed forces to suppress the resistance of those regions and people who did not accept this coup,” Putin told the 25th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin.
