Putin: Ukraine Would Have ’One Week Left’ If West Cut Off Aid

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, October 5, that Ukraine would have a “week to live” if arms supplies from Western countries were to end the next day. Putin made the remarks during an hours-long live-streamed press conference at the annual Valdai Discussion Club event in Sochi, Russia, while responding to a question from Mikhail Rostovsky, a long-time columnist for Russian state media outlets, about whether Putin would object to Ukraine joining the European Union. Putin said he would not object, as the EU is an economic alliance and not a military alliance like NATO. He went on to say that neither Ukraine’s economy nor its military defenses could exist without foreign support. “Imagine, if deliveries stop tomorrow, they would only have a week to live until the ammunition runs out,” Putin said, according to machine translations of a Kremlin-published transcript and an English translation voice-over on the Kremlin’s footage. -------- Subscribe to our YouTube channel: Subscribe to Bloomberg Originals: Bloomberg Quicktake brings you global social video spanning business, technology, politics and culture. Make sense of the stories changing your business and your world. Connect with us on… YouTube: Breaking News on YouTube: @BloombergQuicktakeNow Twitter: Facebook: Instagram: