Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday warned that discussions about deploying foreign troops to Ukraine would effectively amount to a declaration of war against Russia.Speaking on the sidelines of the Brics Summit, Putin remarked, “Now they are talking about how they are thinking about bringing troops to the territory of Ukraine. This means war with Russia.”Addressing suggestions that Russia poses a threat to European nations amid the ongoing war in Ukraine, the Russian leader firmly rejected the notion.“There is no such threat, and there has never been. We are not threatening European countries, nor are we going to threaten them. Why would we?” Putin said.He argued that there was no basis for any dispute between Russia and Europe, stating that all outstanding matters had been resolved following the second world war.Putin’s remarks arrive as the war with Ukraine continues in its fifth year. Since then, several European countries have continued to back Ukraine, while the United States has sought to play the role of mediator, facilitating talks between Moscow and Kyiv.Turning to political developments within Europe, Putin also commented on the recent rise of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which topped the state election in Saxony-Anhalt earlier this month.He described the current state of affairs across Europe as the outcome of “systemic mistakes” made by the West in the fields of politics, security and economics.“Everyone makes mistakes. We have made quite a few mistakes ourselves, as has the rest of the world,” Putin acknowledged, before adding that the West’s “globalists” had, since the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union, come to see themselves as being at the “top of Olympus”, believing both that they could act without constraint and that they were incapable of error.According to exit poll figures released by German broadcaster ARD and reported by Al Jazeera, the AfD won 44.5 per cent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, more than double the 18.5 per cent secured by Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU).This marks the first time since the Second World War that a far-right party has come first in a German state election.The AfD has never been part of a governing coalition at either state or federal level, with mainstream parties upholding a long-standing refusal to work with it, a barrier widely known as the “firewall”.
