The Kremlin said Thursday that the US and NATO’s “direct involvement” in the war in Ukraine is “growing” as the Western powers are pledging to send tanks and other equipment.
“There have been repeated statements from the European capitals and from Washington that the sending of various weapons systems, including tanks, to Ukraine by no means signifies the involvement of these countries or the alliance in the hostilities in Ukraine,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
“We strongly disagree with this. Moscow perceives everything that both the alliance and the capitals I mentioned have been doing as direct involvement in the conflict. We see that it is growing,” Peskov added.
US and other Western officials have typically downplayed the idea that they were directly involved in the conflict, although German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Berlin and its allies were “fighting a war against Russia.”
President Biden tried to downplay the provision of tanks by claiming they did not pose an “offensive threat” to Russia. But Russian officials clearly don’t see it that way and view the move as a major escalation.
Sergey Karaganov, a former advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, told Al Jazeera that Russia could retaliate against NATO countries in response to the new aid. “By sending tanks, the NATO countries are becoming more openly involved in the war, and that makes them potential targets,” he said.
“Kremlin Says NATO’s ‘Direct Involvement’ in Ukraine War Is ‘Growing’ A former advisor to Putin says Russia could retaliate against NATO countries for sending tanks to Ukraine”
Absurd insane politicians begging to make their countries capital cities ground zero for megaton nukes.
Russia could retaliate but they will not. They have limited conventional means to retaliate and they certainly are not going to get their country blown to bits over Ukraine by going nuclear.
This one is near the top of the list of Dangerous Western Illusions About Russia”
Indeed, I think it was a fond belief of the neoconservative gang that Russia was a military paper tiger and would fold in the face of a NATO-backed Ukraine which had been preparing since 2014 for this war. That, and the belief that Russia’s economy would collapse under US sanctions. Those two false assumptions led the US to jump into a hot mess with both feet. Now the US can’t see a way to get itself out without the humiliation of its wrecked ambition to rule the world. Neoconservatives thought they had all the options covered and they hadn’t covered any of them.
Red, I fear it is the opposite. That is Putin/Russia having illusions that they can take on NATO with conventional weapons. To me that is more dangerous.
Maybe and maybe not, once heading down the path of war there is no certain outcome.
Clausewitz, Nonlinearity and the Unpredictability of War
https://www.clausewitz.com/item/Beyerchen-ClausewitzNonlinearityAndTheUnpredictabilityOfWar.htm
“once heading down the path of war there is no certain outcome” That is a very true statement. That is why Putin decision to start the largest war in Europe since WW2 is so dangerous.
You are not correct sir. On a playground one child said to the teacher he started it and the other child responded in kind. Regardless of the NEOCONS overthrowing the legitimate government of Ukraine in 2014 or the stab in the back of Russia as NATO was expanded ever eastward in violation of verbal agreements between George Schultz and Shevardnadze.
Regardless of the politics, the wheels and cogs of the Eastern European industrial war are interesting and as I have said. Armies win battles and logistics wins wars.
The North won the American civil war in the 1850s, because they had factories and logistics. The South had the finest military senior officers and troops as evidenced at the first battle of Bull Run. The South had to rely on munitions shipped in from thousands of kilometers awayi.e. Europe.
However, it you want to consider the politics and foreign affairs in Eastern Europe Judge Napolitano sums up the situation quite well:
“The North won the American civil war in the 1850s, because they had factories and logistics. The South had the finest military senior officers and troops as evidenced at the first battle of Bull Run. The South had to rely on munitions shipped in from thousands of kilometers awayi.e. Europe.”
First the civil war was in the 1860s. Second the “finest military senior officers” only existed on the Eastern front. The West was dominated by better Northern officers. And than there is Gettysburg, where the fine Southern officers blunder on failed attacked known forever as Pickett’s charge.
Yes you are correct it was the 1860s (I was hasty in typing) and the 1850s was the Crimean War. However, at the beginning of the Civil War the South did have the better officer corp. Initial battles were won by the South, but logistics and a deep industrial base won the war for the North.
Hence my repeated statement: Armies win battles, but logistics wins wars!
Russia’s conventional means is absolutely destroying NATO. Russia wont go nuclear but if NATO does then Europe and America are gone.
The CIA have the capability to deliver a battle field nuke with HALO sky divers from 30,000 feet plus with out being detected , they wanted to use one in Vietnam but the sane people in the room said NO , so if a nuke goes off you will know where it came from .
“Russia’s conventional means is absolutely destroying NATO” Sure, and the Easter Bunny is going to bring chocolate eggs to my house on April 9.
Oh my God. This is a proxy war for the fate of Russia. They WILL blow the world to bits of the alternative is being bombed out and turned into a failed client state full of murder like Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria…
Does everyone want to roll the dice and make it a World War?…
WWIII…………………………………………………………………………………
Dear Planet Earth, you’ve been great, it’s been wonderful.
Sure looks that way. Putin tossed the first set of dice, when he attacked Ukraine. Once a war gets going, it takes on its own life and who knowns where is will end.
Yeh but what led him to invaded ? , or don`t you really know just another sheep feeding on Western propaganda perhaps ? .
You are just another sheep feeding on Russian propaganda. You believe Russian lies. Now the question is why?
Probably because they actually pay attention. The rationales for NATO involvement in this war are totally fucked. If you believe we’re white knighting this situation because “America is the good guys!” I have a bunch of legal papers from the Iraq war that discount national sovereignty you should read. We ended a 20 year occupation so we could claim invasions are an evil the entire world should fight.
So the people who believe the stated justifications are fucking idiots.
Have you considered that the world isn’t a kids video game, and that almost every war is evil vs evil?
Well said ZM, well said.
The first toss of the dice was in 2014 when US/NATO overthrew the legit government in Ukraine and placed a Nazi junta in the Rada.
This was a declaration of war. Kremlin for over 8 years has done everything they could to avoid war. NATO has done everything they can to ensure war happens.
” Kremlin for over 8 years has done everything they could to avoid war” No they did not. Russia invaded last February, that is hardly doing everything to avoid war. And the idea that Nazis currently run Ukraine is simply ridiculous. Just a silly attempt by Putin to justify his invasion.
Then who is Stepan Bandera, and what was Minsk1 and Minsk2.
Minsk 1 / 2 was a red herring to allow the US / UK to train up the Ukrainian Nazi Army to fight Russians .
Who is Ivan the Terrible and what was the Budapest Memorandum?
Another sheep feeding on Western Propaganda it actually started in 1992/3 when Communism fell and NATO promised not to push further East , a promised they broke , but no surprise there , ultimately the US / UK are responsible for this war , a war that is designed to degrade the Russian Military and trash the Russian Economy so it will be unable to fight another war .
1, NATO never made that promised. 2. Russia is totally responsible for the current war. Russia invaded that is a fact.
The person you’re responding to has been thoroughly brainwashed.
Obviously.
The first toss of the dice, if we include only the post-Soviet period in the summary, was in 1992, when the US Defense Planning Guidance for 1994-1999 was drafted by Paul Wolfowitz and his sidekick Scooter Libby. Infamously, that document provided that establishing and maintaining US global dominance included “. . . deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role . . .”
So you’re just here, making sure no corner of the web is free from US propaganda? Should all us anti-war types just start ignoring everything and chanting that tired bullshit about Putin ending the war whenever he wants, with all the understanding of this war, geopolitics and history of a school kid?
You seem very upset and uncomfortable with dealing with opinions that are different then yours. Why? And tell me what makes you an expert on geopolitics? Based on the language that you choose to use, I don’t think you have a higher education.
Not at all. I love to debate.
I assume neither of us is a credentialed expert given the venue for the discussion.
Nevertheless, here you are, on Antiwar.com defending the pro-war, propaganda line that such luminaries as Bill Kristol is pushing. The bullshit is thick, and one doesn’t need an advanced degree to detect it in the air.
We can’t stop this war if even we can’t even realize we started this war. Victoria Nuland and her neocon and neoliberal pals started this with the coup in 2014 that ousted the elected Russian leaning leader and replaced it with a NATO puppet. Then the “peace loving” Ukrainians bombed the *** out of their supposedly fellow citizens in the Donnas for 8 years before Russia finally intervened. Just this week Nuland was giving a speech in Congress about how proud we should be that we bombed the Russian pipeline. She is a pure zealot of the MIC.
I found this link to the Nuland story: https://www.rt.com/news/570572-nuland-celebrates-nord-stream-blast/
And I found a link to her full testimony here: https://www.foreign.senate.gov/hearings/countering-russian-aggression-ukraine-and-beyond
Her testimony begins at about 11 minutes in.
But the comment about Nord Stream is later, and I couldn’t handle listening to the whole thing. Western reports on the hearing have, naturally, omitted any mention of Nord Stream.
I still think the larger problem here is the possibility of escalation and what will be left of our beautiful planet when it is done.
We’re sending weapon systems, tanks, possibly planes in the future, but we’re not involved. Why make such an asinine statement. Russia knows better and so do all the players in the war.
I thoroughly agree with this assessment, and I believe that preemptive strikes against NATO weapons systems before they enter the theater are totally justifiable and sensible. If the Europeans really want to participate in this fantasy hatched by the Americans, they should be prepared to see it appear on their front doorsteps. IMO, this is the only way the Russians are going to be able to convince the comfortable Euros that they are participating in the US-hatched attempt to destroy Russia.
This ain’t a reality TV show, as the Ukrainian TV actor would have the Europeans believe. It’s an attempt to destroy Russia, hatched by a demented fool and his lackeys.
Perhaps Dimitri Medvedev should be running the war effort as Putin seems too slow to take the kind of action that needs to happen to put an end to the war. While a strong Russian action may indeed lead to escalation by the West but if the war isn’t brought to an end soon the odds of a global war increase greatly as the west and NATO being led by the U.S. has shown little regard of Russia’s response and see it as weakness which as Paul Craig Roberts has stated will inevitably lead to Nuclear War.
The Russians are such crybabies. There is not reason to complain if you are not going to do anything about it. One think Russia can do is destroy the roads and railways leading in and out of Poland, and the bridges over the Dnieper. Better yet, hit NATO bases in Poland. By complaining the Russians only make themselves look weak. NATO knows there will be no Russian response so they have nothing to fear. Russia needs someone brutal like Stalin, not the whiners currently in the Kremlin.
Hitting the NATO bases would be a huge mistake.
Force is the only language nato understands. Bitching and whining only makes Russia look weak and encourages more nato aggression.
Well looks like Russia has gotten more than it bargained for. I thought the “feint to Kyiv” was brilliant. If it hadn’t had been a feint and was actually serious, Russia could have seized Kyiz grabbed Zelensky and maybe won the special military operation in a few days. Obviously that didn’t happen and the new reality is the West is going to supply enough aid to insure Russia never wins. So they can go home and lick their wounds or destroy the planet. The sooner they go home the more of a semblance of a military they will have left.
I am not sure if was a feint or not. But it was a blunder. It gave the Ukrainians a needed win which than cause the West to send significant support to Ukraine.
Yeah interesting “war” Russians are having. They can’t take Kiev and remove the terrorist puppet regime, and at the same time hold large military exercises with the Chinese.
But then again, stupidity and arrogance of your masters is what got you into this predicament.
The predicament that our military is untouched, and Russia’s is being cut up. Some say 100k killed that is quite a big number if true. The tricky bit happens in the event that Russia starts to win, we have to be able to walk away and not send advisors, and not send troops.
Suuure. In a world Captain America, Iron Man and Ghost of Kyav, Russia already lost all their military. heh
But seriously. There are probably more dead American mercs than Russian soldiers. Good-fucking-luck with that walking away thang! Mission creep is just going to escalate. Pentagon thugs have thrown everything but a kitchen sink at Russia and they continue to liberate towns in Ukraine. The imperial regime will send jets and next will be troops. The American grunts in Poland and Romania aren’t there for show. Your masters really, really want to get out and have Europeans fight but you are not getting out. It’s doomed if you do and doomed if you don’t. Run and you will lose your European vassals, your empire and any remaining reputation. Stay in and watch your empire deteriorate slowly as Russians grind down your military and reputation.
Personally, I’d prefer if Kremlin ended your terrorist empire quickly. It would save many innocent lives but it seems they and Chinese want watch you suffer.
These complaints are going to deaf ears Boris. Time to turn Ukraine into the new graveyard of Empires.