Putin rejects Western allegations about Russian threat as false claims

MOSCOW, June 23. /TASS/. NATO and EU leaders use false statements about the alleged Russian threat in order to ramp up their defense spending, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with graduates of higher military academies on Tuesday.

The West is openly discussing preparations for war with Russia and increasing its defense budgets, he emphasized.

"To substantiate such expenditure and the radical militarization of their countries, NATO and EU leaders, as before, use false claims about the alleged Russian threat," Putin explained.

Russia is well aware of what the Russian leader called schemes being used by the pseudo-Democratic West. "Even after the treacherous attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, and I insist that it was treacherous, the West, Hitlerian Germany, tried to accuse the USSR and [Soviet leader Joseph] Stalin of aggression against what we today call the collective West. Surprisingly, quasi-scientific circles are still mulling this," he concluded.