VIENNA, June 21. /TASS/. The US, NATO and the European Union oppose the freezing of the conflict in Ukraine, which indicates their desire to wage war, Konstantin Gavrilov, the head of the Russian delegation at the Vienna talks on military security and arms control, said on Wednesday.

"The US, NATO, and the EU openly state that they are against a freezing of the conflict in Ukraine. So they want to wage war. Russia is ready for this. The so-called counteroffensive by the Ukrainian Armed Forces has only reaffirmed that the criminal Kiev regime disregards losses in personnel, just to justify to Western sponsors their expenditures on military support of their country in its current fascist and misanthropic form," he said at a plenary session of the OSCE Forum for Security Cooperation.

He said that "attempts to shift the responsibility for the crisis of European security onto Russia will not change the real situation," while Western countries "are responsible for the escalation of the armed confrontation and the potential expansion of its area."

The diplomat said Ukraine must return to respecting its neutral, non-aligned status, which was enshrined in its Declaration of State Sovereignty in 1990, and abandon its plans to join NATO and the EU.

"We call on the US and its Western satellites to withdraw Western mercenaries and military equipment from Ukrainian territory and convince their Kiev subordinates, before it is too late, to take the path of peaceful negotiations," Gavrilov said.