The West has used Ukraine as a pretext for an “undeclared war” against Moscow, and put Russia in a position in which it had to protect its “very statehood,” the secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolay Patrushev, said on Tuesday.
Speaking at a meeting of the Security Council’s scientific advisory board, Patrushev said that the current “unprecedented geopolitical crisis” was caused by the Western-led destruction of “the global security architecture and the international legal system.” He argued that instead of engaging in constructive dialogue with Moscow, the US and their allies conducted a “military-political expansion towards Russia,” built up support for Ukrainian authorities, and pushed Kiev “to carry out a large-scale violent action in eastern Ukraine.”
In Patrushev’s opinion, the main objective of the West is to create conditions for the establishment of a Western-controlled regime in Russia, “as it was already tested on Ukraine and a number of other states.” The military offensive on Ukraine, he argued, prevented this from happening. In his words, Moscow had to take “preventive measures,” since the threats to national securityreached a level that endangered “the very statehood of Russia and its existence.”