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Kiev’s national security strategy aimed at long-term confrontation with Moscow — official

The strategy names Russia "aggressor and the main external threat for Ukraine," Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev notes
Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev ITAR-TASS/Zurab Dzhavakhadze
Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev
© ITAR-TASS/Zurab Dzhavakhadze

MOSCOW, August 11. /TASS/. Ukraine’s national security strategy up to 2020 is focused on the long-term confrontation with Russia, Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev said on Tuesday.

"According to the estimates of our experts, the Strategy of National Security of Ukraine is aimed at the long-term confrontation with Russia, and this cannot but concern us," Patrushev said in comments to the document.

Patrushev noted that the strategy names Russia "aggressor and the main external threat for Ukraine." The document says that Ukraine should no more pursue a multi-vector policy and defines the United States as the only strategic partner.

The document sets the task of dropping the country's non-aligned status and switching the armed forces and military industry to NATO standards. Another goal is to educate Ukraine’s young people in the spirit of hatred towards Russia.

Ukraine’s national security strategy also provokes a further escalation of the conflict in the southeast, Patrushev said.

Violence in Ukraine has killed 6,500 people in the past year, wounded 16,000 and left 5 million people in need of humanitarian aid, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).