There are no opportunities for Russia to somehow significantly escalate the situation while it is waging war against Ukraine, according to the head of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine Kyrylo Budanov.
“I have been hearing all these myths about escalation since 2014. What is escalation when we are fighting a fully conventional, all-out war? – Absolutely all types of weapons that exist in the world have already been used. Well, what else can be done to escalate the situation?” – he said at the 20th annual meeting of YES in Kyiv on September 13-14, organized by the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation.
Budanov rejected the seriousness of the suggestion that Russian President Putin would provide much more aid to countries and groups in the Middle East in order to escalate the war there.
“How can he help when he himself asks for help from others? How will it help globally? Yes, you can send a special forces unit, no problem. You can transfer, for example, 50 MANPADS. But what next? – Everything is fighting here, the entire Russian army, everything that is produced goes directly from the assembly line to the front. Everything they buy – by the way, no one gives them anything for free – everything goes to the front. How will they help?” – the head of the GUR of the Ministry of Defense argued his position.
“Globally, they cannot do anything while the war in Ukraine continues,” he concluded.
The ex-head of the Central Command of the US Armed Forces, partner and head of the Global Institute, General David Petraeus, expressed the opinion on YES that today there is no reason to talk about the possibility of Russia using even tactical nuclear weapons, not to mention strategic ones.
According to him, at the beginning of the war, there were well-founded fears about the possibility of Russia using nuclear weapons, which led to a warning that in this case the Black Sea Fleet would be destroyed.
“However, we later saw the limit of China’s support for Russia. Subsequently, Xi (President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping) publicly called on the Russian Federation to refrain from this step. And then (Indian Prime Minister Narendra) Modi made such a statement,” Petraeus argued.
In his turn, the National Security Adviser to the President of the USA, Jacob Sullivan, commenting on Putin’s repeated threats that he will consider the permission to use long-range missiles against Russia as NATO’s direct entry into the war, noted that the USA takes into account the possibility of threats from Russia in its actions.
“We don’t just sit here and say there is absolutely no threat from Russia, because we’ve seen what Russia is doing all over Europe, and we’ve seen their ability to break all kinds of norms to cause harm, including harm to NATO allies.” , – said the president’s adviser.
According to him, the US looks at what the Russians say and do, and develops its policy accordingly in coordination with its allies and Ukraine.
At the same time, Sullivan emphasized that President Biden and his administration have repeatedly refuted the assumption that they will be paralyzed by Russian threats.
“We have obviously directed huge amounts of aid to Ukraine, despite threats from Russia, and we will continue to do so,” he said.
