“I would like to draw your attention to the fact that it's not Russia's actions that have led to an escalation in Ukraine. Rather, it is the coup d’état in 2014, which was supported first and foremost by the US. The US has even publicly announced how much money it has spent back then to organize and orchestrate this coup d’état… A number of European leaders have said publicly that they had been duping us because they had been using that time to rearm the Ukrainian troops,” Putin told a NBC reporter after being asked about alleged Russian plans for a “massive escalation in the Ukraine war.”

"Ball on their side," Russian President added on talks with Ukraine

"As for our relationship with North Korea, we ratified our Treaty on Strategic Partnership, which contains Article 4, and we have never doubted the fact that North Korean leadership is very serious about their commitments to us and engagement with that," said Russian President Vladimir Putin during the press conference following the BRICS summit in Kazan.

“[Is it] just in terms of security that for years our permanent appeals towards partners have been ignored? Our appeal is not to expand NATO to the east. Is it just to lie to our face promising that there will be no such extensions and then violate their obligations and do that?... Is it very just to get into our underbelly?” stated Putin answering the BBC journalist’s question regarding Ukrainian crisis.

"[Those people] getting ahead of themselves without enough basis in terms of technology development. They're closing down everything that has to do with nuclear energy and coal power generation," noted Russian President Vladimir Putin during the press conference following the BRICS summit in Kazan.

“You spoke about drone attacks and so on. Yes, indeed, we didn't have that [before the start of the SMO]. But there was a much worse situation. It was that we received as a response to our [security] proposals... we were always being told where is our place is. And in the end, where we were ‘supposed to be’ would lead us to falling back of sliding to the second-tier countries which are only serving the purpose of commodity markets, appendages with a loss to a great extent of our national sovereignty,” Putin told a BBC reporter who asked about how Russia’s security has been affected over the past two years by the NATO-sponsored conflict in Ukraine.

"But [Russians] are not the ones doing the escalation. It's the other side that's always doing this escalation, but we're prepared for that... Are those countries who are doing that, are they prepared for it?" President Putin said in response for question alleging Russia's role in current geopolitical turbulence.

“BRICS is an organization today. This is fact and you are absolutely correct. We need to give some structure to how this organization functions, and this is something my colleagues and I are working on. But on the whole, each and every member of the BRICS group is self-sufficient,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said, answering a reporter’s question about the BRICS bloc’s evolution at his big end-of-summit presser.

“Any person can raise his eyes to the sky and say that he’s the pope, or something like that. It cannot happen like that. There are certain electoral procedures…We believe that President Maduro ran fair and square, he put together a government and we wish him and his government every success…and we truly hope that Brazil and Venezuela have a bilateral discussion and find a solution,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said at his end-of-BRICS-Summit press conference, commenting on Brasilia’s rejection of the results of July’s presidential elections in Venezuela.

"I know President Lula, a very honest person with integrity. And I'm sure that would be his stance… using an objective stance. And he will treat the situation objectively," said Russian President Vladimir Putin during the press conference following the BRICS summit in Kazan.

“The NBC News correspondent asked about North Korean troops and whether Putin had been talking to Donald Trump. He suggested that Russia was escalating the war in Ukraine by inviting North Korean troops, but Putin responded that it was the US who had started the war when it initiated the 2014 Maidan coup - something the NBC correspondent seemed oblivious about. The Trump question showed the Western media's obsession with an alleged Trump-Putin connection that has never proven to have existed,” Kuzmarov said.