The West’s constant attempts to draw Kiev into NATO is one of the main causes of the Ukrainian conflict, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit here. Putin claimed that the crisis arose largely because of the “coup d’etat in Kiev in 2014, which was provoked by the West”, as per reports.

“The second reason for the crisis is the West’s constant attempts to draw Ukraine into NATO, which poses a direct threat to Russia,” he said. In February 2014, clashes between protesters and state forces in the capital Kyiv culminated in the ousting of then president Viktor Yanukovych. According to Putin, “as a result, the political leadership of the country that did not support Ukraine’s accession to NATO was removed”.

Putin is in China to partake in the summit of the 10-member bloc. The SCO founded, 2001, in Shanghai, initially, had six countries: Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. India and Pakistan joined in 2017, followed by Iran in 2023 and Belarus in 2024.