Putin said that at first, the interests of the United States and its European partners coincided because the European Union “wanted to strike a well-known [association] agreement with Ukraine on terms that I believe were unprofitable for Ukraine”.

The previous Kiev government tried to fight it, but “the Western community followed another scenario, implementing the military scenario, an anti-constitutional coup, an armed seizure of power,” he said.

According to Putin, the events’ initiators did not calculate what they could lead to.