News - Middle East: Russia under President Vladimir Putin has taken on the role of an anti-imperialist power, placing it at odds with the United States, the sole imperial power seeking global hegemony, according to Patrick Lawrence, a US political commentator and foreign affairs journalist.

Lawrence said in an interview with Press TV on Thursday that Putin was left with no choice but to launch a military operation in Ukraine by the United States.

Putin on February 24 ordered a “special military operation” in Ukraine’s Donbas region. Putin said his country was defending Russian-speaking communities through the "demilitarisation and de-Nazification" of Ukraine so that their neighbor became neutral and no longer threatened Russia.

US President Joe Biden, however, called the Russian action an "unprovoked and unjustified attack," and the mainstream American media described it as the biggest assault on a European state since World War Two attack by Russia.

Lawrence said, “The Russian intervention in Ukraine is very regrettable but very necessary.”
“It is important to put events in their proper context, with history and chronology in mind, to understand this. It was clear from President Putin’s February 22 announcement of his plans— February 22 being the date of the US-cultivated coup in 2014—that he made his determination with great reluctance,” he said.