Russia wants to solve conflict with Ukraine ‘peacefully’: President

Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Tuesday, said that Moscow wanted to solve the conflict in Ukraine peacefully but the Western countries had prepared a “different scenario” behind its back, Reuters reported.
“We were doing everything possible to solve this problem peacefully, negotiating a peaceful way out of this difficult conflict, but behind our backs, a very different scenario was being prepared,” Putin said while addressing the federal assembly. He further criticized the United States and said that only America has many military bases around the world.
“I want to emphasize that… no country in the world has as many military bases abroad as the United States. There are hundreds of them… around the world… The whole world has seen them withdraw from fundamental armaments agreements, including the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. They unilaterally tore apart the fundamental agreements that maintain world peace. Why did they do this? Just because they could,” Reuters quoted the Russian President saying.
“The elites of the West do not hide their purpose… That is, they intend to transform a local conflict into a phase of global confrontation.