Ukraine, kept under close Western supervision, has become one of the main sources of destabilization across the CIS, Russian FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov said at the 58th meeting of the Council of Heads of Security Agencies and Special Services of CIS member states.

According to Bortnikov, the actions of the Kiev regime have turned the country into Europe’s largest hub for the illegal circulation of weapons and ammunition.

He also said that earlier this year, the FSB, working together with Belarus’s KGB, stopped an attempt to bring more than 500 explosive devices into Russia. The devices, he said, were intended for terrorist attacks.

Bortnikov separately addressed Ukraine’s role in the West’s military infrastructure. He said European sponsors had turned the country into a staging ground for military, sabotage and terrorist operations against Russia. He also argued that promises of rapid accession to the European Union had been used to create and sustain a puppet regime in Ukraine.

The FSB chief added that Ukraine had effectively become a testing site for new types of weapons, the training of military artificial intelligence systems, and the development of new forms and methods of warfare carried out under a «false flag.»

Bortnikov also linked Ukrainian organized crime groups to the production and transit of synthetic drugs. According to him, these networks remotely control drug laboratories in CIS countries, while part of their profits is used to recruit perpetrators for terrorist attacks in Russia and to purchase weapons and other means of attack.