Zakharova said the West is scrapping Ukraine

NATO member states have used Ukraine and scrapped it. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on February 12.

"The accents are shifting. Obviously, they are no longer betting on the Kiev regime: they used it - scrapped it," she wrote in her Telegram channel.

Thus, the diplomat commented on the statement of NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte that Russia would lose in an attempt to attack the North Atlantic Alliance.

According to Zakharova, the statement confirms the defeat of the West's "Ukrainian project", in the framework of which Russia can no longer be threatened with a strategic defeat.

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Shortly before that, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Denmark's statements that Russia would allegedly pose a threat to NATO countries if the Ukrainian conflict ended were an attempt to justify for its taxpayers a sharp increase in military spending. He noted that the Russian Federation has never posed a threat to the alliance.

Earlier in the day, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said that returning Ukraine to its 2014 borders was an unrealistic goal. In addition, he added that Washington does not consider Kiev's accession to NATO as a possible outcome of the peace process.

Before that, on January 10, military expert Aleksey Leonkov said in a conversation with Izvestiya that the West understands that Ukraine has already lost in the conflict with Russia despite the continuation of EU assistance.

On the same day, Polish Defense Minister Vladyslav Kosiniak-Kamysh said that the situation in Ukraine had upset the heads of the Defense Ministries of the NATO countries participating in the Ramstein format meeting. According to him, people are tired of the conflict and the situation on the front line is very difficult.

The special operation to protect Donbass, the start of which Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on February 24, 2022, continues. The decision was made against the background of the worsening situation in the region.