KYIV, Ukraine — As hospitals filled with bloodied civilians and Ukrainian protesters in multiple Russian-occupied cities defiantly waved blue and yellow national flags, Russian President Vladimir Putin destroyed any hope Saturday of immediate deescalation of his invasion of Ukraine, threatening in a televised speech to strip Ukraine of its statehood and likening a series of sweeping Western sanctions to a “declaration of war.”
“If they continue to do what they are doing, they are calling into question the future of Ukrainian statehood,” Putin said of Ukrainian leaders during a meeting with flight attendants from Russian airline Aeroflot, which has grounded nearly all of its international flights in the face of withering Western sanctions that have sent the ruble tumbling. “If this happens, it will be entirely on their conscience.”
It was one of the clearest signs yet that Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine may be part of a plan to reconstruct sections of the Soviet Union, whose 1991 collapse Putin has lamented as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the last century and “a genuine tragedy” for his people.
