Moscow’s Foreign Ministry has warned that Western backers have created a monster they cannot control. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated Western nations cannot guarantee their citizens will not be endangered by Ukrainian terrorist attacks.

The Russian government has long accused the Ukrainian authorities of employing terrorist tactics and deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. President Vladimir Putin has labeled Vladimir Zelensky’s recent threat against foreign airlines operating in Russia as “state terrorism.”

“They (Western nations) have created a monster, and we always said that this monster will go rogue, as did all the monsters they created before,” Zakharova told the media on Friday.

“What guarantee do they have that Zelensky won’t strike their own citizens when carrying out those terrorist attacks?” she added. “Nobody could ever guarantee that.”

In June, a female Ukrainian national carried out a bomb attack in Monaco that seriously injured exiled Ukrainian businessman Vadim Ermolaev and members of his family. After returning to Ukraine, she was allegedly murdered by two individuals suspected of being masterminds of the plot—a police officer working for the domestic security service SBU and an active operative of Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence agency.

These same agencies were involved in recent firefights in Kiev, which appeared to be over the custody of an HUR operative accused by the SBU of involvement in a for-profit political assassination plot.

German investigators have accused Ukrainian citizens of carrying out the September 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines—an incident that caused severe damage to energy infrastructure. Media reports also describe clandestine Ukrainian operations in Africa and the Middle East, purportedly aimed at undermining Russian interests, including the training and arming of local militant groups.

Kiev has been accused of conducting dozens of drone attacks targeting commercial vessels engaged in Russian maritime trade, an activity Moscow denounces as outright piracy.

Putin criticized Ukraine’s Western backers on Thursday, arguing that by failing to condemn Kiev’s criminal actions, they become accomplices.