Russian leader Vladimir Putin has made the utterly ridiculous claim that he did not start the war in Ukraine, a conflict which he definitely did start when he invaded the country in 2022.
Alternatively, you could easily put the starting point of the war earlier, since Putin's Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine back in 2014 and then supported pro-Russian separatist groups in the Donbas region.
Once again we arrive at the conclusion that Vladimir Putin started the war in Ukraine, even if he denies it.
So why is he saying otherwise?
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According to Putin, it was actually Ukraine that started the war when they responded to Russian-backed paramilitary groups, which seized several towns in the Donbas in April 2014.
The struggle between the Ukrainian government and the separatists lasted eight years before Putin launched his invasion.
According to Metro, The Russian president made his shocking claims during a visit to Sarov, a closed town where the Soviet Union developed their nuclear weapons.
They report that he insisted 'there is propaganda working' in the West for the purposes of 'brainwashing people and claiming that we started the war'.
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Putin said the West and Kyiv were ‘forgetting that it was they who started it in 2014 when they used tanks and aviation against the peaceful population of Donbas'.
"That is when the war began, and we are doing everything to stop it," he added.
He also reportedly claimed that people in the Western world liked him and Russia, which doesn't tally with findings from a study from the University of Cambridge which found that Russia was among the most disliked countries in the West, with 87 percent of people holding a negative view of it.
Ever since he started hostilities with Ukraine, Putin has repeatedly made false claims about Ukraine including allegations that their government is fascist and that he was launching a 'special military operation' to 'de-Nazify' the country.
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Given his status as the aggressor and the propaganda machine he uses to his advantage, Putin is not beholden to the truth when speaking to Russians about what he is doing.
Some inside Russia have said that most of the populace believes Putin's propaganda, with new censorship laws passed shortly after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine to clamp down on sources of information which would contradict the Kremlin's line while independent news outlets were forced to close down.
The Russian president last week visited the US for talks with Donald Trump over his idea of what peace in the war would look like, with him demanding Ukrainian territory, a block on Ukraine joining NATO and for Western troops to stay out of the country so they cannot provide security guarantees against a possible future invasion.
Following those talks, Russia launched one of the largest bombardments it has made against Ukraine this year.
Topics: Vladimir Putin, Russia, Ukraine
Joe Harker