The battle in Ukraine may intensify into a large-scale war across Europe and there is a growing likelihood of Russia’s forces getting engaged in new conflicts, warns a high-ranking Russian military official.
“The main source of military threats to our state is the anti-Russian policy of the United States and its allies, who are conducting a new type of hybrid warfare in order to weaken Russia in every possible way, limit its sovereignty and destroy its territorial integrity,” Colonel-General Vladimir Zarudnitsky, the leader of the Russian army’s military academy of the general staff, said Thursday.
“The possibility of an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine – from the expansion of participants in ‘proxy forces’ used for military confrontation with Russia to a large-scale war in Europe – cannot be ruled out,” Zarudnitsky said in a piece for Military Thought, a publication of the Russian Defense Ministry.
“The likelihood of our state being purposefully drawn into new military conflicts is significantly increasing.”
The Western camp is working to provide Ukraine with additional arms and funding against the backdrop of an unsuccessful counteroffensive by Ukraine’s military last summer.
Zarudnitsky proposed modifications to the organization of Russia’s military and security forces, including prioritizing alliances with friendly nations to safeguard Russia’s security and uniting Russian society in support of its defense requirements.
The Ukraine war has sparked the most severe crisis in Russia’s relations with the West since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
President Vladimir Putin has cautioned that the West could incite a nuclear war by deploying troops to Ukraine.
In a new development which is set to further escalate tensions, Sweden was officially sworn in as the 32nd member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on Thursday after it completed its accession process in Washington.
