MOSCOW, April 3. /TASS/. The Western establishment pursuing anti-Russian and pro-Ukrainian policies has demonstrated its complete ineffectiveness, which has only harmed NATO and EU countries, former US Marine Corps intelligence analyst and former UN weapons inspector in Iraq Scott Ritter said in an interview with TASS.

"Ukraine enabled us to create an even bigger picture of the Russian threat that requires more money. So, there is this deeply entrenched establishment that has been promoting this conflict in Ukraine. But they have been showed to be feckless and actually instead of helping the West, this policy has hurt the West," he said.

Ritter noted that the conflict in Ukraine is a "byproduct of decades of anti-Russian, anti-Soviet policy." He stressed that Western countries had used Ukraine against the Soviet Union even before the 1940s.

"In Potsdam (the Potsdam Conference in July-August 1945 — TASS), when we talked about the partitioning of Poland, that was about Ukraine. We were involved in creating Ukraine, expanding it, bringing Western Ukraine into it. We have been using Ukraine as a tool to attack the Soviet Union, attack Russia since the end of World War II," Ritter added.