Anglo-American spies trying to destabilize Central Asia – Moscow

US and UK intelligence services are attempting to leverage their long-standing ties with various terrorist groups to sow chaos in Central Asia, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergey Naryshkin, has said.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Naryshkin said the West, led by the US, was seeking to maintain its grip on global hegemony. To achieve this goal, Western countries are trying to contain the development of other nations by fomenting strife and exploiting international and sectarian tensions, he claimed.

Naryshkin noted that, despite Washington’s “humiliating” withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, British and American intelligence services still cooperate with underground terrorist cells “to destabilize the situation not only in [this country], but also in Central Asia and Eurasia as a whole.”

US and UK spy agencies, he continued, essentially created such notorious terrorist organizations as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). Washington and London are still operating in countries like Syria, which has been the scene of a multi-sided civil war since 2011, and Afghanistan, the intelligence chief alleged.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the West is trying to manipulate existing conflicts, including the one raging in the Middle East, to undermine Russia and inflict a “strategic defeat” on the country. In February, Nikolai Patrushev, the former secretary of Russia’s Security Council who was recently appointed as an adviser to Putin, warned that the US could use any regional conflict to target countries that refuse to follow Washington’s lead in foreign policy.