Fate of Russia, Its Place in the World Being Decided Today, Russian Foreign Intelligence Chief Says

Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has given rise to cracks in the US-dominated “rules-based international order,” with the US and its allies slapping Moscow with crushing sanctions and promising to spend hundreds of billions of dollars more on their militaries.

The present moment has “historic” significance for Russia, and the country has not and cannot retreat from its main historical priority of sovereignty, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service chief Sergei Naryshkin has said.

“Our country is experiencing a truly historic moment right now. The fate of Russia, its future place in the world, is being decided,” Naryshkin said, speaking at meeting of an expert council on history education on Wednesday. “The main factor in the development of Russia, the core of its thousand-year history has been and remains sovereignty – the right to independently, freely and consciously determine its own destiny,” he added.

“Sovereignty is a guarantee of the well-being and dignity of our citizens…In such matters, Russia has never retreated and will not retreat, because otherwise it will stop being Russia,” Naryshkin said.

Commenting on the ongoing Russian military operation in Ukraine, the spy chief stressed that the decision to carry it out, taken with the aim of protecting the population of the Donbass and protecting Russia’s own security, “was based on a deep analysis of historical patterns and an extremely accurate and realistic assessment of the situation in the world.”

“Russia was simply left without a chance to act otherwise. The slightest delay in regard to the openly Russophobic, corrupt and oligarchic Kiev regime would have resulted in a great tragedy in the near future,” Naryshkin suggested.

The Russian military published classified documents belonging to the Ukrainian National Guard last week which appeared to confirm Kiev’s plans to start a fresh offensive in the Donbass in March of 2022. Kiev made no secret of its militarization activities, with an analysis of the website of the country’s main defence contractor Ukroboronprom showing a 27.4 percent increase in production in 2021, and a whopping 48 percent growth in output in January 2022.

The Russian military also published documents last week indicating that Kiev authorities were seeking to scrub evidence of a Pentagon-backed biowarfare programme operating in the country. US officials and media initially dismissed the Russian reports as fake news and disinformation. However, undersecretary of state Victoria Nuland confirmed last week that Ukraine hosts “biological research facilities,” and said Washington was “quite concerned” that the “research materials” contained therein might fall into the hands of Russian troops.

The Russian MoD later revealed in briefings that the US-funded biolabs had been tasked with conducting research into bat, reptile and bird coronaviruses, and that the labs sent serum samples of “Slavic ethnicity” patients to the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland under the pretext of testing for COVID-19 treatment methods, for reasons as yet unclear. The facilities were also studying the possible spread of deadly pathogens via wild birds, according to the MoD.