Putin ally says NATO is helping attacks on Russia from Ukraine
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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.
