Russia is a peaceful country, and people are being killed in Ukraine because of Kyiv and the West, which started the war, Vladimir Putin cynically stated, widely quoted by propaganda media.
NEWS: President Vladimir Putin stated that Russia is not responsible for people's deaths in a conflict it did not initiate, during his address line combined with his annual press conference. Responding to a question from an NBC journalist, the Kremlin leader said, “we did not start this war”. He emphasized that Moscow had long not recognized the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics (DNR and LNR). According to Putin, after ignoring Russia and failing to comply with the Minsk Agreements, Moscow was forced to resort to military force to end the war started by the Kyiv regime with the support of Western states. The Russian president also said that Russia wants peace in 2026 and aims to resolve all disputes through negotiations. He reiterated that Moscow had tried for eight years to resolve the Ukraine conflict peacefully.
NARRATIVES: 1. Russia did not start the war and bears no responsibility for the casualties. 2. The armed conflict was started by Ukraine, with Western support. 3. Russia's intervention was driven by the failure of the Minsk Agreements. 4. The special military operation is designed to stop the war.
PURPOSE: To shifting responsibility for civilian casualties onto the West and Ukraine. To justify Russia's military aggression. To delegitimize Ukraine and Western support.
Fact: Russia started the war, which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths so far.
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: The war between the Russian Federation and Ukraine started in 2014, with the military occupation of Crimea and Russia's intervention in eastern Ukraine, carried out through a set of hybrid instruments: troops in unmarked uniforms, takeover of strategic points, direct support for separatist groups, arms deliveries, mercenaries and a disinformation campaign. The annexation of Crimea resulted from an imperial-style invasion, followed by a referendum unrecognized by the international community in a territory that legally belongs to Ukraine. Russia created two self-proclaimed republics in Donbas (Donetsk and Luhansk) which it has consistently financed and supported... The invasion launched on February 24, 2022, confirms the expansionist nature of Moscow's policy. Russian troops attacked from multiple directions simultaneously, bombarded Kyiv and other major urban centers, struck civilian infrastructure across Ukraine's territory, including in the west of the country, and pursued a change in Kyiv's political power to one favorable to Moscow. These elements define a large-scale war of aggression against a sovereign state, not an action meant to stop a local conflict, which, in fact, Russia had also started and fueled for eight years.
Invoking the Minsk Agreements serves as a tool for portraying victimhood. The Agreements were designed to halt all hostilities generated by Russia's 2014 intervention and create a framework for de-escalation. The Agreements (in particular Minsk II, signed in February 2015) were a package of diplomatic measures negotiated under the OSCE umbrella, with France and Germany participating, aimed at ending hostilities. In practice, however, the Minsk Agreements' provisions were not fully implemented, and their execution remained stalled, largely because the parties accused each other of ceasefire violations and because there were no effective enforcement mechanisms. Reports from international observers have repeatedly documented ceasefire breaches in areas controlled by Russia-backed forces.
Launching a large-scale war with unprecedented destruction in Europe since the end of World War II and a very high number of military and civilian casualties cannot be presented as a tool for peace. In Russia’s view, pacification meant bombing strictly civilian targets (schools, kindergartens, residential buildings, medical institutions), energy infrastructure with the aim of leaving the civilian population in the cold and dark during winter in order to demoralize it, equipping Russian Shahed drones with sirens similar to those of German Stuka aircraft from World War II to instill terror, and the (sometimes total) destruction of Ukrainian frontline cities like Mariupol, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Pokrovsk, Kupiansk, etc. Moreover, all calls for peace have been ignored by Russia. In the run-up to the 2022 invasion, Russian leaders were repeatedly warned by the West and urged not to resort to force, but these appeals were ignored, and Moscow chose the path of military escalation.
Russia has also rejected all 2025 ceasefire proposals while continuing to present itself as a peacemaker. While accusing the West and Ukraine of prolonging the war, Russian officials refuse to halt hostilities, contributing to casualties and civilian infrastructure destruction. Overall, the narrative promoted by Vladimir Putin rewrites the conflict's chronology, downplays Russia's role in starting and expanding the war, and shifts responsibility for casualties onto Ukraine and the West. The strategy seeks to normalize aggression, justify human losses and maintain domestic support for continuing the war by portraying it as inevitable and defensive.
BACKGROUND: On December 19, 2025, Vladimir Putin held his traditional annual conference, combined with the “direct line” format called by the Kremlin “Year in Review”, a marathon session broadcast live in which he answered questions from journalists and citizens and addressed a wide range of topics from the war in Ukraine and negotiation prospects to the economy and domestic policy. In this context, Vladimir Putin claimed that Russia does not consider itself responsible for the deaths in Ukraine, said that Moscow would be willing to accept reducing attacks into the depth of Ukrainian territory, spoke about organizing potential elections in Ukraine and what he called the legitimacy problem of Kyiv's authorities, accused Western states of escalating the conflict and presented the Russian economy as highly developed despite sanctions.
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