ASTRAKHAN, April 27. /TASS/. Secretary of Russia’s Security Council Nikolay Patrushev on Wednesday said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization sent its military advisers and instructors to Ukraine with the purpose to push Kiev to use force to resolve the situation in Donbass and start an armed conflict with Russia.
He made the comments at a meeting on security in southern Russia.
Patrushev said since 2014 Ukraine has been under full US control and "was intensively utilized by the armed forces of NATO countries and inundated by state-of-the-art weapons."
"NATO countries sent their military advisers and instructors with the single goal to prepare the Kiev regime for a forceful solution of the issue with the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics and to provoke an armed confrontation with Russia," he said.
He said that Moscow had been doing everything possible for eight years to resolve the situation in the Donbass with regard to the millions of people living there by using peaceful, political means. "However, the Ukrainian authorities weren’t going to conduct any dialogue with their citizens, declared them "terrorists", and then publicly announced that they would not comply with the Minsk agreements," the Security Council secretary stated.
In this context, Patrushev continued, the statement of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in Munich on February 20 - the day before Russia recognized the independence of the DPR and LPR - that Kiev was ready to gain nuclear weapons for its own protection, received full support and approval from Western countries.
"Under these conditions, the information received about the impending Ukrainian aggression in Donbass and Crimea forced our country to take pre-emptive measures to ensure its security and protect the population of the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics, which includes Russian citizens," he said.
Patrushev said that the special military operation that’s being carried out on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin is aimed primarily at protecting people who have been subjected to abuse and genocide by the Kiev neo-Nazi regime for eight years, as well as at the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.