'Root causes' of war must end: Putin

West scolded over Nato enlargement

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Russian President Vladimir Putin, after talking with China's Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi, said yesterday the issue of Nato’s eastward enlargement would have to be addressed for there to be sustainable peace in Ukraine.

Mr Putin ordered tens of thousands of troops to invade Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops. Russia currently controls a little under one fifth of Ukraine.

Ukraine and Western European powers describe the invasion as a brutal imperial-style land grab. Mr Putin casts the war as a battle with a declining West, which he says humiliated Russia after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 by enlarging Nato eastwards.