MOSCOW (Dispatches) – Russian National Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev has said that the arms the U.S. and its allies continue to send to Ukraine will not have an impact on the outcome of Russia’s ongoing military operation.

Russia’s “goals will be achieved despite the U.S. and the West providing military assistance to Ukraine,” Patrushev, who formerly headed up the country’s domestic security service, the FSB, said at a national security meeting in the far-eastern city of Khabarovsk.

The official said that the operation was prompted by a whole range of threats that developments in Ukraine “posed not only to Russia’s security but to the whole world.” The Security Council secretary identified the spread of neo-Nazi ideology and the Ukrainian biological laboratories linked to the Pentagon as examples of such threats.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously stated that the operation was launched to “demilitarize” Ukraine and also to protect the people of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, the independence of which Russia recognized in February. Russia was left with no other options to end the years-long bloodshed in Donbass, the president said in March, less than a month after the start of the military action.

In late June, Putin said that Russia’s objectives in Ukraine had not changed. The final goal is “to liberate Donbass, to protect these people and to create conditions that would guarantee the safety of Russia itself. That’s it,” he said in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, during his first foreign trip since February.

On July 3, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced that Russian forces and the Donbass militias had seized control over the whole territory of the Lugansk People’s Republic.

Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”

 

Lavrov Calls for Efforts to 

Protect International Laws

 

On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov  called on all parties in the world to make efforts to protect international laws as “the world is evolving in a complicated manner”.

“Vietnam is a key partner of Russia in ASEAN...and the two countries’ relations are based on history and their common fight for justice,” Lavrov said at the meeting, referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Vietnam and Russia have close ties dating back to the Soviet era.

Lavrov’s visit to Hanoi comes as the two nations mark the 10th anniversary of their “comprehensive strategic partnership”. 

The Russian foreign minister is due to fly on to Indonesia to attend a meeting of G20 foreign ministers this week.