MOSCOW — A defiant President Vladimir Putin on Monday called the Ukrainian army a “NATO foreign legion,” reflecting his readiness to stand up to the West regardless of rising economic costs, as Standard & Poor’s rating agency downgraded Russia’s credit rating to junk.
Speaking to students in St. Petersburg, Putin said the Ukrainian leadership was to blame for the upsurge in violence and accused it of using civilians as “cannon fodder” in the conflict.
Ukraine’s army “is not even an army, it’s a foreign legion, in this case a NATO foreign legion,” Putin said, adding that it’s serving the goal of “the …read more
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
