Director-General of the Russian International Affairs Council Andrei Kortunov told TASS yesterday that the more the West supports Kiev with military aid, the more they force Russia to intervene directly in the Donbas conflict. “What is happening now can be characterized as some internationalization of this conflict. In some sense, this is a success of the Ukrainian policy, as Kiev has always set the goal of making the confrontation international, and everyone understands that Kiev has a flawed position in the Russia-Ukraine bilateral system of coordinates,” Kortunov said. “But if the conflict turns into a Russia-West stand-off, then the balance of forces radically changes and the asymmetry swings to the opposite and more in favor of the West. In this case, the aggregate possibilities of the West rather than those of Russia are more likely to take the upper hand,” he concluded.
Otherwise, Kortunov said that US military aid to Ukraine is unlikely to change the balance of forces in the Donbas conflict. “The Russian stance is that if Kiev partially attempts to resolve the conflict in southeastern Ukraine by military means, this will trigger Russia’s direct engagement with possible disastrous consequences for the Ukrainian statehood. In this case, no Javelins and no drones will help Kiev,” he said, referring to US-supplied Javelin anti-tank missiles and Turkish-made combat drones, both of which the Kiev regime has recently bragged it has employed in the Donbas conflict.
