Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksandr Turchynov has named six major threats to Ukraine the Russian Federation is posing.
He called military aggression a primary threat. "This is not only about the exhaustion of our country as a result of constant military provocations in the east, ongoing military occupation of the part of Donbas and Crimea. This is about a large-scale massing up of military infrastructure along our border, the focus of several Russian armies of the southern and western military districts on conducting operations in the strategic Ukrainian direction," he said in an interview with LIGA.net.
According to Turchynov, this indicates that, if Russia fails to regain control over Ukraine by political means, Moscow could resort to large-scale military aggression.
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He considers the second threat information aggression and an attempt to influence the political architecture in Ukraine as well as the political choice of Ukrainians both through information tools (media, social networks) and by supporting directly and secretly their agents of influence in Ukrainian politics.
The third threat is cyber aggression, "which, according to the actual losses inflicted is comparable to military aggression."
"A serious confrontation is ongoing at the cyber front, but we have done a lot to significantly enhance our cyber defenses," he said.
The fourth threat, according to Turchynov, is economic war.
"The main problem here is the ongoing blocking of the transit of Ukrainian goods to Asian countries via Russia, the blocking of normal operations of ports in the Sea of Azov, the loss of significant markets for Ukrainian goods, application of a wide arsenal of provocations in foreign markets for military products, etc.," Turchynov said.
"The fifth threat relates to energy. It's the attempt to block the work of the Ukrainian gas transmission system by building bypass gas pipelines, including on the territory of our strategic partners," he said.
Turchynov called terrorism the sixth threat. Namely, it is about the operations of sabotage and reconnaissance groups, Russian assets and mercenaries tasked with for carrying out terrorist acts, as well as sowing discouragement, fear, destabilizing Ukraine from within, "which our special services are actively opposing."
"However, this is not the whole list of threats Russia has been implementing in the framework of its hybrid war against our state," Turchynov said.
He expressed conviction that Ukraine has a powerful potential to become a regional leader in Eastern Europe.
"But to this end, we must, first of all, change the economic situation in the country. Today's GDP growth rates are not sufficient, not only for ensuring regional leadership, but also for ensuring priority security programs required for the reliable protection of our state," he added.
