MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday vowed to defend Russia’s “homeland and values” in a defiant speech from the Kremlin in which he announced Russia was annexing four regions from Ukraine and said the West feared Russian culture.
Presenting a long list of grievances against the West, Putin accused the United States and its allies of waging a “hybrid war” against Russia and the separatist administrations it backed in eastern Ukraine.
He said the West had broken its promises to Russia and had no moral right to talk about democracy, and that the countries of the West were acting as the imperialist states that they had “always been”.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
