DHAKA: Russian president Vladimir Putin on Thursday accused Ukraine’s new authorities of driving the country towards the abyss but said that dialogue was the only way out of the intensifying crisis.

‘Only through dialogue, through democratic procedures and not with the use of armed forces, tanks and planes can order be imposed in the country,’ media quoted Putin as saying at the start of a major nationwide phone-in broadcast on Russian television, reports Al Arabiya.

He accused the authorities who took over after the fall of president Viktor Yanukovych of driving the country ‘to the abyss’.

He also said it was ‘nonsense’ to claim Russian forces were operating in the east of Ukraine, saying those involved in protest actions were ‘all local citizens’.

He also recognized for the first time that the troops in unmarked uniforms who had overtaken Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula before its annexation by Moscow were Russian soldiers.

He expressed hope for a political and diplomatic solution of the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War, saying he hopes that he won’t have to send Russian troops into eastern Ukraine, which has been engulfed by violent protests against the new authorities in Kiev.

BDST: 1707 HRS, APR 17, 2014
Edited by Robab Rosan, Current Affairs Editor