MOSCOW, August 1. /TASS/. The root cause of the Ukrainian conflict is in consistent attempts to fashion the "anti-Russia" of sorts out of Ukraine, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Komsomolskaya Pravda radio.

"The Ukrainian conflict is quite complex. On the one hand, it is rather simple, the cause is known - they tried to transform Ukraine into the center of the anti-Russia and turn it into the concentration of anti-Russian forces right next to our borders," he said.

Peskov noted that, pursuing these goals, in Ukraine, "practically an armed coup d’etat was fostered first which for many years disrupted the legitimate chain of power." "And then various regimes were fostered there, one after another, that turned a blind eye to growing Nazism and extremism in that country," Putin’s press secretary said. He stressed that Kiev was forced to make a choice between the West and Russia, juxtaposing the two, "which is inherently wrong." "And, as a result, we’ve got what we’ve got," the Kremlin official concluded.