Iran Press/ Iran News: Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev is seen by diplomats as one of the major influences on Putin, who has promised victory in Ukraine despite a series of battlefield setbacks.
"The events in Ukraine are not a clash between Moscow and Kyiv — this is a military confrontation between Russia and Nato, and above all the US and Britain," Patrushev told the "Argumenti Fakti" newspaper in an interview.
"The Westerners' plans are to continue to pull Russia apart, and eventually just erase it from the political map of the world," Patrushev said.
The US has denied Russian claims that it wants to destroy Russia, the world's biggest producer of natural resources, while President Joe Biden has cautioned that a conflict between Russia and Nato could trigger World War Three.
Asked about Patrushev's remarks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Nato and the US were part of the Ukraine conflict.
"De facto they have already become an indirect party to this conflict, pumping Ukraine with weapons, technologies, intelligence information and so on," Peskov told a regular news briefing.
Russia's Feb 24 invasion of Ukraine has triggered one of the deadliest European conflicts since World War Two and the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when the Soviet Union and the US came closest to an intentional nuclear war.
The US and its allies have condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine as an imperial land grab, while Ukraine has vowed to fight until the last Russian soldier is ejected from its territory.
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