Putin Complains West 'Outplayed' Russia in Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the West outplayed Russia in Ukraine after his initial invasion of the country in 2014.

Putin made the remarks on Tuesday during an expanded meeting of the Russian Defense Ministry Board at the National Defense Control Center in Moscow. He said that, after 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, the West did not implement the second Minsk agreements and immediately started a virtual war there. "In this sense, if I may say so, they outplayed us," Putin said.

The Minsk agreements were signed in 2014 and 2015 and sought to put an end to the separatist war in eastern Ukraine. Minsk II, which came after the first agreement quickly collapsed, included a ceasefire monitored by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and called for the pullback of heavy weaponry from the contact line.

Ukraine accused Russia at the time of failing to withdraw its forces from the two disputed regions, Donetsk and Luhansk. However, Russia rejected the accusation, saying it didn't have forces there. Newsweek has contacted Russia's Foreign Ministry for comment via email on Tuesday.

"We didn't do anything, but gradually we had to get involved in order to protect people so that they wouldn't all be exterminated there. That's what started happening," the Russian leader said. He added that the West enjoyed watching what was happening. "In this sense, if I may say so, they outplayed us," Putin added.

Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu also spoke at the meeting, saying that Ukraine has so far lost more than 383,000 troops since the full-scale invasion of the country began in February 2022. Newsweek could not independently verify the figures.

Estimates of casualty figures vary, and Kyiv does not release updated death tolls. In April, a leaked U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency assessment said that Kyiv had suffered 124,500 to 131,000 casualties, including 15,500 to 17,500 dead.

Russia similarly rarely releases figures on troop losses. In September 2022, Shoigu said 5,937 of Moscow's troops had been killed in the war.

A joint investigation by the BBC's Russian Service and independent Russian news outlet Mediazona on November 17 identified the names of 37,052 Russian military personnel who have died in the war in Ukraine. It said that the actual number of losses was higher than the figures stated in the investigation.

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