Moscow, March 5: Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that if Ukraine were a NATO member this would encourage it to invade Crimea and the allies would have had no choice but to support it. “If this [Ukraine] was a NATO country, in accordance with that organization’s founding treaty all other members of the alliance would have to support this country in an armed conflict,” Putin said at a meeting with female crew members of Russian airlines, adding that “they [Ukraine] would push into Crimea the same way [as in Donbas].” “And we would have to fight with the entire NATO,” Putin added. The Russian president added that the West had been neglecting deaths in Donbas for eight years, since the authorities in Kyiv launched a military operation against the country’s eastern region in 2014. “From 13,000 to 14,000 people have been killed during these years. Over 500 children have been killed or maimed. But what is especially unbearable that the so-called civilized West has been preferring not to notice that all these years. Well, listen, [it has been] eight years,” Putin said.Â
