Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country would never give in to the West's attempts to use Ukraine as a tool to destroy Russia.
-Russian President Vladimir Putin devoted his annual New Year's address on Saturday to rallying the Russian people behind his troops fighting in Ukraine and pledging victory over Ukrainian "neo-Nazis" and a West supposedly intent on "destroying Russia".
For months, the Kremlin presented the conflict as a limited campaign that would not affect most Russians' lives. As the war drags into its 11th month with no end in sight, the Kremlin has slowly put society on more of a war footing - calling up more than 300,000 reservists, often in chaotic fashion, retooling an economy hurt by a barrage of Western sanctions and saying publicly that the conflict may be long.