BAKU, October 11. /TASS/. Western intelligence agencies are training Ukrainian saboteurs to mount attacks on Russian nuclear energy facilities, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergey Naryshkin told reporters.

"It has come to the point where Western intelligence agencies are training Ukrainian sabotage and terrorist combat groups for attacks on Russia’s nuclear energy facilities. This has been confirmed," Naryshkin said on the sidelines of the 53rd meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Council of Heads of Security Agencies and Special Services, now convening in Baku.

"Such actions have certainly been prevented by our intelligence agencies, <...> the Federal Security Service. Attempts have been made to cause damage to the Kursk, Smolensk and Zaporozhye nuclear power plants. Clearly, it’s hard to maintain any contacts with Western intelligence agencies under such circumstances," he added.

Naryshkin pointed out that the West was using Ukraine to counter Russia, "while the Kiev regime keeps employing overtly terrorist methods against Russia and the entire Russian world." "This includes terrorist attacks on a number of journalists, writers and opinion leaders, as well as acts of terrorism against residential areas, cities and towns in Russia and civilian infrastructure facilities," he went on to say.

When speaking about terrorist threats coming from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Libya, the SVR chief noted that they were rooted in "the illegal pressure and even direct acts of armed aggression by the United States and its allies against those countries." "However, major developments are afoot in the world as it is moving towards multipolarity, and Russia’s intelligence agencies maintain extensive interaction and cooperation with special services in other countries, namely those in the Global South, including our partners, friends and colleagues in the intelligence agencies of CIS member states," Naryshkin concluded.