A NATO flag flutters next to the Presidential Palace in Vilnius, Lithuania July 10, 2023. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Putin ally Patrushev says NATO is helping attacks on Russia from Ukraine
MOSCOW,
April 1 (Reuters) - A powerful ally of President Vladimir Putin said on
Tuesday that NATO was basically fighting Russia in Ukraine and that the
U.S.-led military alliance had helped organise strikes on sovereign
Russian territory.
Putin's
2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine has triggered the worst crisis in
relations between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile
Crisis, according to Russian and U.S. diplomats.
Russian
Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, one of Putin's most
powerful allies, said that the 75 years of NATO history since its
founding on April 4, 1949 had shown it to be a long term source of
"danger, crisis and conflict".
"The
North Atlantic Alliance is de-facto a party to the Ukrainian conflict
and is actively involved in organising the shelling of Russian
territories," Patrushev told the Argumenty I Fakty newspaper.
"Within
its framework, collective decisions are being made on new arms supplies
with an increase in their technical and long-range capabilities, and
NATO instructors in several countries are training mercenaries and
saboteurs for their participation in anti-Russian operations."
Ukraine
has struck deep into Russian territory over the past year, bombing oil
refineries and weapons factories with drones and repeatedly shelling
Russian border regions.
Kyiv says it is fighting for its existence in a brutal war which has left swathes of its territory in ruins and thousands dead.
The United States has repeatedly said that it does not support Ukrainian strikes inside Russia.
Putin last month warned the West that a direct conflict
between Russia and NATO would mean the planet was one step away from
World War Three and said that some NATO military personnel were present
already in Ukraine.
'REMOVAL' OF RUSSIA
NATO
members portray Russia's invasion of Ukraine as an imperial-style
land-grab which shows that post-Soviet Russia is one of the biggest
nation-state threats to global stability, alongside China.
Patrushev,
one of the most influential hawks in the Kremlin, described NATO as an
instrument of the United States which he said wanted to ultimately
destroy Russia and steal its vast natural resources.
"The
West considered the collapse of the Soviet Union only as one of the
stages of the confrontation with Russia," Patrushev said.
"The
weakening of our country as an economic and political competitor, and
its subsequent removal from the political map of the world through
dismemberment, are the long-term strategic goals of Washington, London
and the countries of the collective West controlled by them."
NATO,
founded with 12 core members in 1949 to provide Western security
against the Soviet Union, now has 32 members, enlarging after the 1991
fall of the Soviet Union and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
NATO
accepted the former Warsaw Pact states of the Czech Republic, Hungary
and Poland as members in 1999, and in 2004 it accepted the eastern
European states of Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania,
Slovakia and Slovenia in 2004.
Finland joined in 2023 and Sweden in 2024.
The
United States and its allies deny that they want to destroy Russia,
though they cast Russia as an enemy and Putin as a dictator who is
leading Russia to strategic ruin.
NATO,
Patrushev said, was "systematically boosting its military potential
along our borders from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea" and holding
manoeuvres close to Russian territory.
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Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Stephen Coates and Philippa Fletcher