MOSCOW, March 24. /TASS/. The actions of Western countries in Ukraine are promoted by the desire to prevent Russia from becoming a great power, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with TASS General Director Andrey Kondrashov for the Belgrade documentary project.

Commenting on the common opinion in Belgrade that the war that is going on in Ukraine today began not in 2014, not after the coup, but in 1999, when the West stopped hiding all its aspirations for aggression, Lavrov noted that this absolutely coincides with Russian vision, President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly outlined in his recent interviews.

"It all started when, after the disappearance of the Soviet Union - let’s not once again talk about the causes [of the break-up] and lament - the Americans felt that the "field" was generally free, there were no sparring partners left on that side of the field and everyone had to be lined up in one row," the minister said.

"I am sure that if at that moment they did not think about the need to "take away" Serbia, Ukraine, but about how to prevent us from becoming a great power again and remain a regional Russian Federation with a huge number of American advisers in our economic, financial, banking structures - that’s a fact," he added.

According to Lavrov, the hegemons tried to perpetuate their dominance by "living at the expense of others."

"The President [in the interview] uses figurative expressions. He talked about vampires, how they tried to rule the world and live at the expense of others. And they are still trying to maintain such neocolonial domination in somewhat ennobled forms," Lavrov went on.

"The United States left one of two largest, most powerful powers. They quickly began to embody all their ambitions and the luck that turned up into practical actions. Yugoslavia and Ukraine - they are from the same series as the subsequent adventures, the grossest aggressions in Iraq, Libya, Syria, absolutely without any international legal basis," the foreign minister said.

Lavrov also recalled that the United States came to Afghanistan with the "sympathies" of the UN Security Council after the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.

"President Putin was the first to call US President George W. Bush and offered help and support. No one objected or called the entry of American coalition troops into Afghanistan an aggression or occupation. Everyone understood that such a terrorist attack must be held accountable. Twenty years of stay in Afghanistan showed that the Americans did not fight any kind of terrorism. They created structures and organizations there, which later resulted in Al-Qaeda (outlawed in Russia). Then they began to use it to punish and provoke undesirable regimes in the Middle East and other regions," Lavrov said.