Russian President Vladimir Putin openly blamed the West and NATO for his ongoing all-out war against Ukraine during his address at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin on Monday.
Putin defended his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, telling those gathered that the war was "a result of a coup in Ukraine, which was supported and provoked by the West" — a reference to bloody Euromaidan protests in Kyiv, which ended in the removal of Kremlin-allied President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.