In a meeting with Russia's Security Council, President Putin said that the reasons for pressuring Russia are clear, but that Russia will not bargain with its sovereignty.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Attempts by some Western countries to split the Russian society by imposing sanctions have failed, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday.

“Today it is clear that attempts to split, divide our society, to take advantage of certain difficulties, to find a weak link, have not yielded the expected results. Expected by those who imposed these restrictive measures against our country and continue to support them,” Putin said at a meeting with Russia’s Security Council.

The reasons for pressuring Russia are clear, according to the president:

"We are carrying out independent domestic and foreign policies and do not bargain on our sovereignty. Not everyone likes this, but there is no other way."

Moscow does not count on changes in some countries' "unfriendly" attitude toward Russia, Putin said.

Those who impose sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine crisis are in fact responsible for sparking the conflict in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region:

"No one even tries to analyze the causes of what is happening, say, in southeastern Ukraine, over which all the fuss started. I mean that those who impose these restrictive measures against Russia, the so-called sanctions, they are, in fact, the culprits of all the events which we now see happening in Ukraine's southeast."

"Esteemed colleagues, recent events show that there is no reason to count on changes to be made the foreseeable future to the unfriendly course taken by some of our geopolitical opponents," he told the Russian Security Council.