Russia has been doing everything for years to build fraternal relations with Ukraine, but nothing has worked, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, RIA Novosti reported.

"For decades, I want to emphasize that, for decades we have been trying to build relations (with Ukraine) in the new geopolitical conditions, we did everything to build not just good-neighborly, but brotherly relations in the new conditions: we gave loans, and almost free energy resources were supplied for years. No, nothing worked, nothing at all," Putin said at a meeting of the Defense Ministry board.

According to him, "our strategic adversaries have the goal of disintegrating and weakening, dividing our country." "For centuries. There is nothing new here. Too big, as they think, the country, posing a threat to someone, so it needs to be chopped up a little, fragmented. Our geopolitical rivals have always had such a goal. I do not want to offend anyone, but I will say it anyway - everything that is bad lying for their purposes. They began to engage in brainwashing in the post-Soviet countries, and above all - in Ukraine. And they have been doing it quite successfully."

Putin noted that his opponents were well prepared for this, because back in the Soviet times, "they had entire institutions working in this direction."

According to him, what is happening is, of course, a tragedy. "Our common tragedy. But it is not the result of our policies. On the contrary - it is the result of the policy of other countries, third countries, which have always sought to do this: to disintegrate the Russian world. To a certain extent, they have succeeded in pushing us to the line where we find ourselves."