ISTANBUL 

Russia on Friday accused the US of making "billions of dollars" at the expense of ordinary Ukrainian citizens' lives, urging Kyiv to understand that Americans are always concerned with themselves.

“Ukraine must understand that it is not the main concern of the US. The main concern for the United States has always been the Americans themselves. And even at the cost of a large number of lives of those same Ukrainians,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a press briefing in Moscow.

Peskov's response came when he replied to a question about comments made by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken following a meeting on Thursday with UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron, who said 90% of Washington's security assistance for Ukraine has been spent on US manufacturers and producers in the US.

"Very eloquent confession," Peskov said of Blinken's comment, adding that it is a continuation of Washington's US-centric policy, which is being carried out "at the cost of the lives of Ukrainians" in the case of Ukraine.

“It is the Americans who earn billions and billions of dollars from expensive energy resources, from the gas they supply to Europe, from oil. It is the Americans who provide themselves with jobs, increased tax collections, loading their production with orders for shells, military equipment, and so on,” the Kremlin spokesman said, adding, “It’s a pity that this is still not understood in Kyiv.”

He also claimed that Western politicians are using “tricks” to convince people to vote for allocating further money to Ukraine.

“I don’t think there is any need to comment on them, there are a lot of such words now. They resort, so to speak, to all sorts of tricks, just to convince their parliamentarians to vote for the further allocation of money. Therefore, there have been many such statements, and they will probably continue,” he said.​​​​​​​