MOSCOW, March 3. /TASS/. Ukraine had been working on the creation of nuclear weapons for quite some time, and the United States was aware of that but posed no hindrances, the chief of Russia’s intelligence service SVR, Sergey Naryshkin, said in a statement on Thursday.

"According to the Russian Defense Ministry Ukraine has retained the technological potential for making nuclear weapons. Its capabilities are far greater than Iran’s or North Korea’s. Moreover, according to some evidence the SVR has obtained Ukraine did conduct certain work in this direction," the statement reads.

Naryshkin stressed that both Russia and the United States knew about that.

"However, the US posed no obstructions to such plans. On the contrary, it was ready to ‘lend a shoulder’ to Ukraine, apparently hoping that Ukrainian missiles armed with nuclear warheads would be aimed eastwards, not westwards," he stressed.

The SVR director recalled that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky had told the Munich Security Conference Ukraine might reconsider its non-nuclear status.

"However, there followed no reaction from the leaders of the EU countries. The Europeans, usually so much worried about threats to their security, this time turned a deaf ear to Zelensky’s warning. Apparently, they preferred not to take it seriously enough. How wrong they were! Those threats were not just empty talk or a spontaneous blunder by a politician a little bit carried away with an illusion of impunity.".