Putin after meeting Macron: Do you want to go to War with Russia?

"If Ukraine joins NATO and tries to retake Crimea by military means, European countries will automatically be in military conflict with Russia."

This was stated by Russian President Vladimir Putin after six hours of talks with French leader Emmanuel Macron.

The guest was the first speaker of European interests amid tensions between the West and Russia over Ukraine, while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz negotiated in parallel with US President Joe Biden at the White House.

Asked by reporters, Putin reiterated that „we (Russia) are strongly opposed to Ukraine's accession to NATO because NATO's infrastructure is moving towards us, not the other way around."

In an aggressive tone, he even effectively threatened the West with nuclear weapons in the event of such a conflict.

"Neither I nor Macron want that."

Putin also returned to his second argument last week in support of Moscow's two main demands to Washington and NATO as conditions for de-escalation after weeks of tensions over the gathering of between 100,000 and 130,000 troops near Ukraine. In the list of Moscow's proposals, the West rejected these two: to close the door to Ukraine's future membership in the Alliance and NATO to return its military positions within the borders by 1997 (in other words, from the time before the membership of Bulgaria and Romania). Last week, it became known that the West had made other proposals in exchange for the rejected two.

According to Putin, the fact that Western countries perceive Crimea as part of Ukraine could create problems if Ukraine becomes part of NATO, and Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty presupposes collective intervention in support of Kyiv in order to regain the...