SOLNECHNOGORSK /Moscow Region/, August 23. /TASS/. The United States and other Western countries have trained the Kiev regime, set it on a terrorist path, and have long been directing its strikes on civilian targets, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

"We have been documenting these crimes for a long time, despite denials or attempts to present them in a different light. We have said that the United States, in the first place, has groomed the Kiev regime, putting it initially on an extremist path and now on a purely terrorist one," she said on the sidelines of the 10th Territory of Senses national educational youth forum.

"They laid the groundwork for this by undermining Ukrainian statehood—all of it to use Ukraine as a tool to, as they put it, inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. In our view, this is a hybrid war declared by the West. So, we should not follow their terminology blindly and must recognize the true meanings behind their actions," she said.

"We have always maintained that the West has been the guiding force behind all of the Kiev regime's attacks on civilian infrastructure since the first day of the open phase of the conflict, and from day one we identified the regime's terrorist activities," Zakharova said.

According to the Russian diplomat, this applies to the UK-backed attacks on the Russian Black Sea Fleet, which Russia saw as terrorist attacks. "Kiev could not have obtained intelligence, satellite data, and information from anywhere but NATO, primarily from the Anglo-Saxon duo of Washington and London," she noted, adding that the Russian side has consistently pointed out the criminal alliance between the collective West and Kiev regime.