The NATO bloc is now essentially at war against Russia, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said, RIA Novosti reported.

"Today Russia, liberating the people of Ukraine from neo-Nazism, is fighting not only nationalist formations and the AFU. In fact, the NATO bloc is fighting against us, whose members provide the Kiev regime with heavy weapons, ammunition, intelligence, and training of military specialists," Patrushev said.

According to him, the NATO members participate in the planning of military operations, blackmailing the use of weapons of mass destruction.

"And these are not empty words. The U.S. and its allies have long been implementing their plans to create biological weapons in laboratories deployed around the world, including near Russian borders. Some of the laboratories, as we already know, were located in Ukraine and were used to create particularly dangerous pathogens," Patrushev noted.

"Therefore, solving the tasks of denazification, demilitarization of Ukraine is a necessary condition for neutralizing threats to the security of our people and people in the liberated territories, as well as for protecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation," the Secretary of the Security Council said.