MOSCOW, October 28. /TASS/. Western mercenaries, volunteers and instructors are fighting for Kiev, and have been for a long time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a press conference following talks with top Kuwaiti diplomat Abdullah Ali Al-Yahya.

"The [Russian] president has repeatedly provided specific data that service members from Western armies are fighting in the ranks of the Ukrainian armed forces. There are mercenaries and so-called volunteers, as well as instructors, without whom it would be impossible to use not only Western-made long-range weapons but Ukrainian long-range weapons, without these experts and their Western satellite intelligence data, that is, which the Ukrainians obviously don’t have; Ukraine's troops cannot use missiles without specialists to program the flight paths," Lavrov noted, when asked about Russia’s reaction to the possibility of Western troops being deployed to Ukraine in response to North Korea’s support for Moscow.

"Western service members have long been active in Ukraine; it’s part of the hybrid war that NATO and the European Union are waging against our country, and we are well aware of that," the top Russian diplomat pointed out.

When speaking about relations between Moscow and Pyongyang, Lavrov emphasized that Russia had repeatedly stressed that their partnership treaty was openly available, and "the full text has been published." "It in no way violates any international law because it provides, among other things, for mutual support in case either party faces a military attack," the minister stressed. "That said, our position is absolutely honest and open here, while the deceitful statements [by Western countries] that they will send troops under some pretext are nothing but an attempt to justify that which they are already doing," he added.