Efforts are still ongoing to weaken Russia and place it under external control, as can be seen in the case of some former Soviet republics, President Vladimir Putin said in the opening remarks at a session of the Federal Security Service (FSB) board on Wednesday.

"We are up against the so-called policy of containing Russia. This is not about competition, which is a natural thing for international relations. This is about a consistent and quite aggressive policy aimed at disrupting our development, slowing it down, creating problems along the outer perimeter, triggering domestic instability, undermining the values that unite Russian society, and ultimately to weaken Russia and put it under external control, just the way we are witnessing it transpire in some countries in the post-Soviet space," the president stressed.

The president emphasized that he was not exaggerating facts. "In fact, you don’t need to be convinced of this as you yourselves know it perfectly well, perhaps even better than anybody else," he went on to say. "It is enough to familiarize oneself with pubic strategic documents and revealing statements from politicians in a number of countries. They make no bones about their unfriendly attitude towards Russia, towards a number of other independent, sovereign centers of global development," Putin noted.

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