Thread by @RichardHanania

Clips from Putin's Dec 23 press conference. He makes a clear and powerful case for the recklessness of the US and NATO.

"Any further NATO movement to the East is unacceptable. We are not deploying our missiles to the borders of the US...Are we demanding something excessive?"

"What would the Americans think if we decided to come to the border between Canada and the US, or Mexico and simply deployed our missiles over there?"

"This is a matter of security, not just history... We said not an inch to the East, that was the NATO guarantee in 1990. So what became of that? They fooled that. We've seen 5 waves of NATO expansion."

"We're not threatening anyone. We did not come to the US borders...They came to our borders and now they're saying that Ukraine will also join NATO... And you keep demanding some guarantees from us? You must give us the guarantees...and you must do this immediately, right now."

"Sometimes it seems to me that we live in two different worlds. I was speaking about very obvious things. How can you not understand that? You say you will not expand, and then you keep expanding."

"In 1991 we separated into 12 separate parts. It seems to me that our partners were not satisfied with that. They think that Russia is still too large...Even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, we only had 146 million people, and that is too much for the West."

"Our nuclear sites had experts from the US... The Russian government had advisors from the CIA...What else did you need? Why did you have to support the terrorists in the Northern Caucuses?... This was exactly what you were doing and as a former director of the FSB, I know that."

"You should have done something different. Perhaps treat Russia as a possible ally and strengthen trust. But no. Instead you tried to keep breaking us up. And then you started NATO expansion to the East. We were saying don't do that, you had promised you wouldn't."