Rome, 1 September (LaPresse) – ‘This crisis did not arise as a consequence of “Russia's attack on Ukraine”, but as a consequence of the coup in Ukraine, supported and provoked by the West, and then by attempts to use the armed forces to suppress the resistance of those regions of Ukraine and those people in Ukraine who did not accept this coup, did not support it’. This was stated by Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking in Tianjin at the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), as reported by Tass. The West's continued attempts to involve Kiev in NATO are another of the main causes of the Ukrainian conflict, the Russian president said. Putin drew attention to the fact that, following the 2014 coup, ‘the political leadership of the country that did not support Ukraine's entry into NATO was removed.’ According to the president, the root causes of the crisis must be eliminated in order for the Ukrainian solution to be sustainable and lasting.