MOSCOW, March 14. /TASS/. Russia will continue its efforts to quash the proliferation of Nazi ideology from Ukraine, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov said in an interview with TASS.
"The current special military operation by the Russian armed forces is aimed at quashing the genuine dagner of Nazi ideology proliferating from the territory of Ukraine," he said.
The neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine, who "unleashed a civil war in Donbass and have been sabotaging the global community’s efforts to reach a settlement for eight years," came to power after the US-led Western-backed coup in 2014, he recalled.
Amid the developments in Ukraine, "various terrorist and extremist organizations never stop trying to whip up protest sentiment in society and used them to destabilize the political situation, even in CIS member states," he noted. "The January events in Kazakhstan serve as an example. As you know, the CSTO’s (a Russia-led security bloc - TASS) peacekeeping mission, carried out in the spirit of allied mutual support, helped prevent the erosion of Kazakhstan’s integrity and ensure the country’s normalization."
On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation in response to a request for help by the heads of the Donbass republics. He stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, but aimed to demilitarize and denazify the country.
When clarifying the unfolding developments, the Russian Defense Ministry reassured that Russian troops are not targeting Ukrainian cities, but are limited to surgically striking and incapacitating Ukrainian military infrastructure. There are no threats whatsoever to the civilian population.