US hopes Russia is bogged down so it can cleanse Middle East, Asia Pacific: Russian intel chief

New Delhi, March 3 (IANS) The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service has received data indicating the intention of the United States and the Ukrainian regime to drag out the Russian military operation in Ukraine as much as possible and turn it into a positional war.

"Today it is already clearly visible, including from the intelligence information that comes to us, that the American administration and the Ukrainian regime obedient to it are betting on the maximum prolongation of the conflict, its development into a positional war of a high-degree of intensity," the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin, said in a statement, RT reported.

He stated that groups of armed militants were sent to Ukraine from Western countries, who were tasked with organising and supporting the so-called "partisan underground".

"Washington hopes very much that we will get bogged down in this operation and perish, and they will be able to calmly do a 'cleansing' of the Middle East, Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific region. This will not happen -- the ancient has passed, now everything is new," Naryshkin said.

"As for the future of Ukraine, it will, of course, be determined by the Ukrainians themselves. But it will be a completely different Ukraine and a different story," Naryshkin added.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin told his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron that the tasks of the Russian special operation in Ukraine would be fulfilled in any case, RT reported.

Putin also detailed the fundamental approaches and conditions in the context of negotiations with the representatives from the Ukraine side.

He confirmed that, first of all, "we are talking about the demilitarisation and neutral status of Ukraine so that a threat to Russia never comes from the Ukrainian territory".