MOSCOW, November 27. /TASS/. Russian Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov blamed the ongoing Ukraine conflict on what he termed as NATO’s expansionism and stubbornness.

"The situation around Ukraine resulted from NATO's stubborness in completely ignoring Russia’s interests," the Kremlin aide told the Primakov Readings international forum as he recounted how 27 years ago, Russia made diplomatic efforts to prevent any further NATO expansion while ensuring European security.

"Back then, we continued to hold onto the idea of establishing a new system of European security that would see NATO and other international European organizations under the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe - TASS) umbrella," Ushakov noted. The plan would see NATO unable to conduct any activities, especially those that could undermine the principle of the indivisibility of security, without the consensus of everybody on the European continent, but the United States and its allies in the North Atlantic Alliance rejected these terms, the Kremlin official lamented.

"Our minister (Yevgeny Primakov, who was appointed foreign minister in 1996 - TASS) also had other ideas <…> that were aimed at curtailing NATO’s expansionist ambitions, which, unfortunately, never yielded any positive results, and now we have what we have," Ushakov concluded.