UNITED NATIONS, December 27. /TASS/. The events on Kiev’s Maidan Square should serve as a warning to all the nations which the West is trying to use as pawns in order to advance its selfish geopolitical interests, Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya said at an Arria-formula meeting of the UN Security Council.

"Maidan should be a warning to everyone who is being duped by the West in its criminal pursuit of new pawns in order to push its destructive and selfish geopolitical agenda," he said.

The diplomat in convinced that "the history of Maidan is crucial for comprehending the reasons for the decline and decay of Ukraine as a state."

"Although the real Western instigators and beneficiaries of the state coup are well known, they stubbornly refuse to shoulder responsibility for the consequences," he said, emphasizing that the West is ready "to turn a blind eye to all the crimes of the Kiev regime."

On November 21, 2013, the Ukrainian government announced that it had suspended the signing of the Association Agreement with the EU. In response, the opposition in the Verkhovna Rada blocked the work of parliament. A long-term rally began in Independence Square in the center of Kiev. During the three-month standoff, dubbed Euromaidan, aggressive nationalists seized a number of administrative buildings in the west of the country. In the center of Kiev they set up a tent camp and formed armed groups that clashed with police.