FSB chief warns of escalation over US-backed strikes on Russia

Washington’s authorization for Kiev to carry out attacks on internationally recognized Russian territory using Western-supplied long-range weapons will inevitably lead to an escalation of the conflict, the head of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), Aleksandr Bortnikov, has warned.

Moscow must be prepared for any provocations from Washington, London, and their allies, the FSB chief said, specifically noting that US President Joe Biden and his team were likely to aggravate the situation in the key global regions as much as possible before leaving office in January.

“The main goal is to hinder the new administration’s potential opportunities for a political solution to the accumulated problems,” Bortnikov claimed.

He also expressed doubt that the incoming Trump administration would take a drastically different course, stating that “it is unlikely that the election of a new US president will lead to a fundamental change in Washington’s foreign policy.”

Bortnikov accused the US and its partners of using the most “unsightly methods” to create chaos in the post-Soviet space, and turn it into a cheap resource base.

As an example of such efforts, the FSB chief pointed to Ukraine, claiming that the West was turning the country into a testing ground for methods of undermining the security of Russia and the entire CIS space, “tacitly pushing Kiev to a dangerous escalation” and encouraging it to carry out acts of “nuclear terrorism.”

“The consciousness of the Ukrainian population has been reformatted in a Russophobic vein. Land, mineral resources, and industrial production are being bought up en masse by transnational corporations. The territory has become a magnet for mercenaries and terrorists from all over the world. A global shadow market for weapons has been created, the transfer of which to other zones of instability is carried out on a permanent basis,” Bortnikov said.

He stated that Moscow was particularly concerned with the attempts by Ukrainian special services to sabotage Russian military and civilian facilities abroad, and the involvement of Kiev’s intelligence agencies in “training terrorist fighters to overthrow regimes that are undesirable to their Western masters and the elimination of political leaders.”

Bortnikov further claimed that “international terrorism” had become one of the primary tools used by foreign intelligence services to undermine security in various regions of the world, particularly the post-Soviet space.

The West has also expanded its efforts to stir up “nationalistic and xenophobic sentiments” in CIS countries, distort common history, and propagate extremist and terrorist ideologies in the region, the FSB chief added, warning that any “flirting with the West is associated with significant security risks” which could develop into a “full-fledged threat to sovereignty and constitutional order.”