President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that Western sanctions on Russia were ‘akin to a declaration of war’ and warned that any attempt to impose a no-fly zone in Ukraine would be tantamount to entering the conflict. Putin reiterated that his aims in Ukraine are to defend Russian speaking communities through the “demilitarisation and de-Nazification” of the country so that it became neutral. Ukraine and Western countries have dismissed this as a ‘baseless pretext for the invasion’ he launched on Feb. 24 and have imposed a sweeping range of sanctions aimed at isolating Moscow. “These sanctio…