TASS, December 8. /TASS/. The United States and NATO are pursuing a long-term goal of weakening or destroying Russia and fracturing the security architecture in Eurasia, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev said on Thursday.

"The long-term goal of the United States and its NATO allies is to weaken or destroy our country at any cost, as well as to break the security architecture in Eurasia as a whole," the Rossiyskaya Gazeta quoted Patrushev, who is in Thailand for a visit to meet with his Thai counterpart Supot Malaniyom, as saying.

In addition, according to Patrushev, "the West has put its bet on the globalization of NATO and has begun to create the conditions for a comprehensive build-up of its military presence in the APAC (Asia-Pacific Region)". The security chief believes that the AUKUS alliance (the United States, Australia and the UK) is focused on carrying out this task. Patrushev stressed that "the aggressive expansion of military infrastructure in the region leads to a further escalation of tensions."

According to the Rossiyskaya Gazeta, at a meeting of the Russian-Thai interdepartmental working group on security issues in Bangkok today, Russian Security Council Deputy Secretary Alexander Venediktov revealed that Washington's main task was "to destroy or reduce the functioning of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ formats and create mechanisms of regional cooperation on an anti-Russian and anti-Chinese basis.".