President Putin: The West 'outsmarted' Russia in Ukraine after 2014

At a meeting with senior officials in the Russian Defense Ministry, President Putin said: "The West watched the conflict in Ukraine with pleasure. In this sense, it can be said that they outwitted us. In fact, they did not implement the Minsk Agreements. Instead, they immediately started a war there in 2014."

The Russian leader noted that NATO member states have taken aggressive actions against the Donbass residents, forcing Russia to respond to protect the region's population from massacres.

President Putin added that Western countries had actually used the Minsk Agreements to give Ukraine more time to build up its modern armed forces according to NATO standards, in order to further integrate the country into the alliance.

"After that, the Ukrainian authorities simply abandoned the Minsk agreements, and made this public. Then Western leaders did not hesitate to speak about it publicly," President Putin recalled.

Previously, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President Francois Hollande admitted that the Minsk agreements were designed to resolve the conflict peacefully. However, in reality, it was a method for the West to "buy time" to train the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin later admitted that these statements surprised him because he believed in the sincere desire of European countries to strengthen peace and avoid military conflict in Ukraine.