Russian State TV Guest Says Country Invaded Ukraine To Avoid War

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 to prevent “a big war,” according to a bizarre claim made by a Russian political scientist on state TV.

The statement was made by Sergei Markov, an international relations professor at a Moscow university, who was formerly a legislature in the Russian parliament representing Putin’s United Russia party.

Over the past few days, Ukrainian forces have regained some territory in the east and south of the country, as part of an ongoing counteroffensive, though they are not believed to have penetrated the main Russian defensive positions.

Ukrainian servicemen patrol near the recently liberated village of Blagodatne, Donetsk region on June 16, 2023. On Russian state TV, political scientist Sergei Markov claimed Russia invaded Ukraine to avoid “a big war.” ANATOLII STEPANOV/AFP/GETTY

Markov was responding to comments Hillary Clinton made during a recording of the Pod Save America podcast on Tuesday in New York City, when she linked Putin’s desire to “be on the side that wins” with his family’s suffering during the Battle of Stalingrad in WWII.

Referencing a conversation she had with Putin at a 2011 summit, Clinton said: “Think about the trauma that his family and so many Russian families went through, and in some people that kind of trauma makes them feel like never again, no war, we have to be more compassionate and caring, we have to help people.

“And in some people it makes them think ‘I’m going to be on the side that wins, the people that die are going to be the people who I don’t want to see living.'”

Markov disagreed with Clinton’s assessment, insisting what Putin’s family went through during the 1942-43 Battle of Stalingrad made him want to avoid war.

He commented: “And the main thing is we don’t want a war. If only there were no war—these are the main words in the minds of our people. These words are shared by Putin as a man who has been through all these stages with the people.”

The pro-Kremlin academic continued: “That is why we were forced to launch this special military operation, when the leadership of the country realized that everything was going to happen by June 22.

“That a powerful army would be prepared, in fact an army of Ukrainian zombies, slaves, that would invade here and there would be a big war. In order not to have this big war they had to start this special military operation. That’s what she [Clinton] never understood.”

Markov didn’t provide any evidence that Ukraine had been planning to invade Russia, a view almost universally regarded as ludicrous by international relations experts.

Russian forces invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, with Putin saying the goal was to “demilitarize” and “denazify” the country, despite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky being Jewish.

A one-minute clip of Markov’s remarks was shared on Twitter by Anton Gerashchenko, who works as an adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs and describes himself as an “official enemy of Russian propaganda.”

He wrote: “We launched a war because we don’t want a war—the logic of Russian propaganda.”

In an NBC interview published on Thursday, Zelensky said the Ukrainian counteroffensive is “going well,” but admitted his troops are “meeting very stiff resistance.”