Russian president Vladimir Putin took some time today to chat with kids about the situation along his country’s southwestern border, now that Russia and Ukraine are engaged in what seems like war in everything but name.
Speaking at the Seliger youth forum, Putin took time to explain himself compare Ukraine to Nazi Germany. “Sad as it might seem, this reminds me of the events of World War II, when the German Nazi occupants surrounded our cities, like Leningrad, and directly shelled those cities and their inhabitants,” Putin said, according to pro-Kremlin propaganda channel RT.
Of course, that was just the tip of the iceberg:
But the world didn’t stop while Putin was chatting with his country’s future leaders. Ukraine’s prime minister announced on Friday that a bill had been introduced in parliament to cement the country’s intentions of joining NATO. “This law will prohibit the Ukrainian state to become part of any other economic, political or military alliances that would hinder the main goal of accession to the E.U,” Arseniy Yatsenyuk wrote on Facebook. (Such a law would nix Putin’s already slim hopes of ever getting Ukraine for his economic alliance with Belarus and Kazakhstan.)
And Putin, for his part, put out an appeal to Ukraine’s pro-Russian rebels. “I call on the militia groups to open a humanitarian corridor for Ukrainian service members who have been surrounded, so as to avoid any needless loss of life, giving them the opportunity to leave the combat area unimpeded and reunite with their families, to return them to their mothers, wives and children, and to quickly provide medical assistance to those who were injured in the course of the military operation,” he wrote, as if he has no practical sway in the matter.
