A large poster with a portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin is installed in one of the quarters in the center of Baghdad, local residents sent the photo.
Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine early in the morning on Thursday, February 24. President Vladimir Putin called its goal “the protection of people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.”
For this, according to him, it is planned to carry out “demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine”, to bring to justice all war criminals responsible for “bloody crimes against civilians” in Donbass. According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the Armed Forces strike only at the military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops, nothing threatens the civilian population. With the support of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the DPR and LPR groups are developing an offensive. But there is no talk of the occupation of Ukraine, the President of Russia stressed.
Western countries have begun a new round of the sanctions spiral, which has been unwinding since 2014. In particular, several major banks of the Russian Federation, including Sberbank and VTB, fell under the new restrictions, while the European Union, the United States, Canada and a number of other countries closed the sky for flights of Russian aircraft. As the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov said earlier, the Western sanctions are very serious, Russia was preparing for them in advance. He added that they require analysis and coordination of departments in order to develop response measures that meet the interests of the Russian Federation.