MOSCOW, December 19. /TASS/. Moscow was never going to attack NATO countries in the past nor does it intend to in the future, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a board meeting of the Defense Ministry.

According to him, the US is hyping up the so-called "Russia threat" to keep its tenuous hold on the European continent.

"They [the Americans] were very much worried about close ties between Russia and Europe. They need to be the masters of the situation there. They kept frightening [the Europeans]: 'Beware, the evil Russia is a threat to you,'" Putin pointed out. "I met with many leaders who asked me: 'Why are they trying to frighten us? We understand that Russia has no plans to wage war on Europe.' We still have no such plans," the Russian president stressed. "What would we do with NATO countries? We don’t need them. We did not need them in the past, we don’t need them now and we won’t need them in the future," he said.

"And why does [the US] say things like that? The goal is to get them to open their wallet," Putin explained.

He noted that in order to keep its foothold in Europe, the US "unleashed a war [in Ukraine] back in 2014." "For better or worse, we had to gradually join" in, the Russian president said, adding: "We had no choice but to get involved."