Russia says US apparently wants Ukraine to ‘fight to the last Ukrainian’
Moscow:
Russia said on Sunday that U.S. lawmakers backed an additional $60.84 billion in aid to Ukraine, signaling that Washington is sinking deeper into a hybrid war against Moscow that could end up being as humiliating as the conflicts in Vietnam or Afghanistan.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has triggered the most serious fallout in relations between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Russian and U.S. diplomats say.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a $95 billion legislative package on Saturday with broad bipartisan support to provide security aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, despite strong opposition from some far-right Republicans.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said the United States clearly wants Ukraine to “fight to the last Ukrainian,” including attacks on Russian sovereign territory and civilians.
“Washington is getting deeper and deeper into hybrid warfare against Russia, which will bring a resounding and humiliating defeat to the United States in Vietnam and Afghanistan,” Zakharova said.
She said Russia would give an “unconditional and resolute response” to the United States’ move to become more involved in the war in Ukraine.
CIA Director William Burns warned last week that without more U.S. military support, Ukraine could lose on the battlefield, but with support, Kiev’s troops could hold their ground this year.
The United States has repeatedly ruled out sending its own or other NATO members’ troops to Ukraine, which is engaged in a fierce artillery and drone war with Russia on a heavily fortified 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) frontline.
The United States lost more than 58,000 military personnel in the 1955-75 Vietnam War, which ended with the victory of communist North Vietnam and its takeover of the South, while hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed.
During the war in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021, the United States reported that the conflict resulted in 2,459 deaths and more than 20,000 injuries, which ultimately ended with the withdrawal of U.S.-led coalition forces and the return of the Islamic Taliban movement to power.
The Soviet Union lost 14,453 personnel in the 1979-1989 war in Afghanistan. Both wars in Afghanistan resulted in large numbers of civilian deaths.
war in ukraine
Russia currently controls about 18% of Ukraine (to the east and south of its neighbor), since Kiev’s 2023 counteroffensive failed to cause any serious offensive against Russian forces buried behind minefields patrolled and guarded by drones , Russia has been making gradual progress. By heavy artillery.
Ukraine has been begging the United States for months for more money and weapons to help it fight, although Russian officials have insisted that U.S. aid would not change the final course of the war.
Zakharova said ordinary Ukrainians “were being used as ‘cannon fodder’ and forced to be slaughtered, but the United States is now no longer betting on Ukraine defeating Russia. She said Washington hopes Ukraine can hold on until the U.S. presidential election” in November.
The U.S. legislative package includes measures that would allow the U.S. to seize billions of dollars worth of Russian assets frozen due to sanctions against Moscow. This was nothing short of “theft,” Zakharova said, adding that the real beneficiaries of the entire scheme were U.S. defense companies.
Western and Ukrainian leaders view the war in Ukraine as an imperial land grab, demonstrating that post-Soviet Russia is one of the two nation-state threats to global stability, along with China.
Putin sees the war as part of a broader struggle with the United States, which he says ignored Moscow’s interests after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and then plotted to divide Russia and plunder its natural resources.
The West denies that it wants to destroy Russia, while Russia denies that it intends to invade any NATO member.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
