Russian President, Vladimir Putin has in a lengthy address spoken about NATO’s invasion of Libya and how NATO’s “self-serving” illegal decision of interference ruined the oil-rich African country. The Russian leader said this as he was delivering an address to the nation and the world amidst the ongoing conflict with Ukraine.

Mr Putin, in his address, condemned a set of people he referred to as “irresponsible Western politicians”

“The illegal use of military power against Libya and the distortion of all the UN Security Council decisions on Libya ruined the state, created a huge seat of international terrorism, and pushed the country towards a humanitarian catastrophe, into the vortex of a civil war, which has continued there for years.” He said.

He added that “the tragedy, which was created for hundreds of thousands and even millions of people not only in Libya but in the whole region, has led to a large-scale exodus from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe.”

In the address, Vladimir Putin continued by adding that countries like Iraq and Syria equally suffered brutal atrocities just like Libya. “A similar fate was also prepared for Syria. The combat operations conducted by the Western coalition in that country without the Syrian government’s approval or UN Security Council’s sanction can only be defined as aggression and intervention,” he said.

Mr Putin continued by saying “the example that stands apart from the above events is, of course, the invasion of Iraq without any legal grounds. They used the pretext of allegedly reliable information available in the United States about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. To prove that allegation, the US Secretary of State held up a vial with white power, publicly, for the whole world to see, assuring the international community that it was a chemical warfare agent created in Iraq. It later turned out that all of that was a fake and a sham, and that Iraq did not have any chemical weapons.”