MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin said on Tuesday that the United States was trying to pull Russia into an armed conflict over Ukraine that Russia did not want, cautioning that the West had not yet satisfied Russia’s demands for a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe but that he hoped “dialogue will be continued.”
Mr. Putin has massed more than 100,000 troops near the Ukrainian border, in what American officials have warned could be a prelude to an invasion. But Mr. Putin accused the United States of trying to goad his government into launching a conflict to create a pretext for tougher Western sanctions against Russia.
“Their most important task is to contain Russia’s development,” he said of the United States, repeating one of his frequent talking points. “Ukraine is just an instrument of achieving this goal. It can be done in different ways, such as pulling us into some armed conflict and then forcing their allies in Europe to enact those harsh sanctions against us that are being discussed today in the United States.”
In Washington, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, reacted derisively to Mr. Putin’s comments, comparing them to “when the fox is screaming from the top of the henhouse that he’s scared of the chickens.”
“We know who the fox is in this case,” she said. “Russia has 100,000 troops on the border,” she added. “They are the aggressor.”
A State Department spokesman, Ned Price, declined to respond directly to Mr. Putin’s statements, saying, “I will leave it to the Kremlinologists out there — budding, professional, amateur or otherwise — to read the tea leaves and try to interpret the significance of those remarks.”
Mr. Putin’s comments, at a news conference in Moscow with Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, marked the first time since December that he had spoken publicly about the crisis.
The Kremlin has demanded in writing that NATO not expand eastward, guaranteeing that Ukraine will never join the alliance, and that NATO draw down forces in Eastern European countries that were once part of the Soviet Union or part of its orbit. American and European officials have dismissed such demands as non-starters.
Mr. Putin described the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO as an existential threat to world peace. He said that a Western-allied Ukraine strengthened with NATO weapons could launch a war against Russia to recapture Crimea, leading to war between Russia and the NATO bloc. Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 was not recognized as legitimate by the international community.
The United States and NATO delivered written responses to Russia’s demands last week. Russia has not yet responded formally, but Mr. Putin said it was clear “that the principal Russian concerns turned out to be ignored.”
Mr. Putin threatened in December that Russia would take unspecified “military-technical” measures if the West did not meet its demands.
He did not repeat the threat on Tuesday, instead sounding a somewhat optimistic note, describing the diplomacy that has been underway. He noted that President Emmanuel Macron of France could soon visit Moscow.
“I hope that eventually we will find this solution though it’s not easy, we understand that,” Mr. Putin said. “But to talk today about what that will be — I am, of course, not ready to do that.”
Mr. Putin and people close to him have said publicly that Ukraine, with its longstanding political and cultural ties to Russia, is not a legitimate country.
Border with Russian units
KAZAKHSTAN
Russian units
SEA OF
AZOV
Transnistria, a
Russian-backed
breakaway region
of Moldova.
Russia invaded and
annexed the Crimean
Peninsula from
Ukraine in 2014.
Approximate line
separating Ukrainian and
Russian-backed forces near
two breakaway provinces.
Border with
Russian units
Russian
units
Russia annexed
the Crimean
Peninsula from
Ukraine in 2014.
Transnistria, a
Russian-backed
breakaway region
of Moldova.
Approximate line
separating Ukrainian
and Russian-backed
forces.
Jason Horowitz in Rome and David E. Sanger in Washington contributed reporting.
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