MOSCOW, April 28. /TASS/. A small group of Western European countries have been behind every large-scale armed conflict in the past 300 years, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director and President of the Russian Historical Society Sergey Naryshkin said.
"The upcoming celebration of the 80th anniversary of the Great Victory is an opportunity to reflect back on history and draw some conclusions," he said at the international symposium titled "On the significance of the victory over Nazism. Lessons of the UN."
"One of these conclusions is that all of the biggest armed conflicts of the past three centuries have originated from a small circle of Western European powers," he pointed out, adding that this applies to numerous conflicts, from the Seven Years' War of 1756-1763 to World War II.
"We see that aggressive motives of these wars are fraught with destruction and colossal casualties not only in Europe but also thousands of miles away from it," he noted.