Kremlin official blames US for Ukraine's disintegration; 'Attempt to undermine Russia'

One of President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, said on Tuesday, that Ukraine was spiralling towards a collapse into several states because of what he cast as a US attempt to use Kyiv to undermine the Russian Federation. In an interview published on Tuesday, Secretary of Russia’s Security Council Nikolai Patrushev blamed Washington for using its “henchmen” to divide essentially the same people.

Notably, Putin’s all-out war against the former Soviet state is now focused around the eastern Donbass region, which is held by separatists since the Russian invasion of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

"Using their henchmen in Kyiv, the Americans, in an attempt to suppress Russia, decided to create an antipode of our country, cynically choosing Ukraine for this, trying to divide essentially a single people," Patrushev told state controlled newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta. The result of the policy of the West and the regime in Kyiv can only be the disintegration of Ukraine into several states.

Land corridor

Notably, this comes as a senior Russian official last week revealed the Kremlin’s intention of capturing the southern territories of Ukraine so as to build a land corridor between Crimea and the mainland. It has been 61 days since Russian president Vladimir Putin launched what he calls ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine with an aim to apparently wipe off neo-Nazis from the country.

In over eight weeks, Russian troops have claimed control over a considerable part of Ukraine’s southeast including the critical port of Mariupol.

Meanwhile, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine has stated that the European Commission has noted the high level of the response given by Ukraine to the first part of the survey on the political and economic criteria of EU membership.

The development has been confirmed by the Director-General of the Directorate of Neighborhood and expansion of the European Commission Machay Popovski in his meeting with Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine, Olga Stefanishyna. Notably, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy applied for Ukraine's membership in the European Union on February 28, just four days after Russia initiated a military offensive in Kyiv.

Image: mfa_russia/Twitter