MOSCOW, March 1. /TASS/. The West has been pushing Ukraine toward aggression against its own population and against Russia for eight years, Oleg Gavrilov, deputy spokesman for the Russian foreign ministry official said on Tuesday.

"For the eight years since the anti-constitutional coup in Ukraine in 2014, the Kiev regime’s Western patrons, led by the United States, have been deliberately pushing it to aggression both against its own population and against our country," he said.

According to Gavrilov, these actions are geared to form a source of threats to Moscow at the Russian borders. "Washington and its allies in NATO care little about Ukraine’s future as they cared little about the lives of millions of Donbass residents who were officially branded as terrorists by the current Kiev authorities," he noted.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a televised address on February 24 that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in order to protect people "who have been suffering from abuse and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years." The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories.

When clarifying the unfolding developments, the Russian Defense Ministry reassured that Russian troops are not targeting Ukrainian cities, but are limited to surgically striking and incapacitating Ukrainian military infrastructure. There are no threats whatsoever to the civilian population.