West Responsible for Wars Formed for Resistance: Iran’s Shamkhani
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Following the escalation of crisis in Ukraine, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani held the West accountable for the wars that are shaped to counter the Western strategies.
“Nothing is more hateful than war, but when the West seeks to strike at the national security of nations in various ways, it is in fact directly responsible for the wars and crises that are formed in order to resist the West's strategy,” Shamkhani said in a post on his Twitter account on Friday.
On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a “special military operation” against Ukraine, urging Ukrainian government troops to immediately lay down their arms.
Putin’s order came after the leaders of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in the Donbass region asked the Kremlin for military assistance in response to what they called “Ukrainian aggression.”
In 2014, Ukraine’s two regions of Donetsk and Lugansk were turned into self-proclaimed republics by ethnic Russians, leading to a bloody conflict between the government forces and the armed separatists.
On Monday, Putin signed a decree recognizing the breakaway Lugansk and Donetsk regions as independent republics. The recognition followed an address in which he referred to eastern Ukraine as “ancient Russian lands” being “managed by foreign powers.”
