The U.S and its Western allies fail to understand that from Russian President Vladimir Putin¡¯s perspective, they are already at war with Russia, said Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the exiled former head of Yukos Oil Co. who was once the country¡¯s richest person.
With the U.S. and major powers ramping up sanctions on Moscow, supplying weapons to Kyiv, and training Ukraine¡¯s military, Putin views his nation as essentially being at war with America and Europe on Ukrainian soil, Khodorkovsky said in an interview in Washington.
Western arguments drawing a hard line between conflict on Ukrainian land and the spread of war into NATO members¡¯ territory are a nuance that means little to Putin, said Khodorkovsky, whose falling out with the Russian leader in the early 2000s led to him spending nearly a decade in prison before going into exile.
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