‘RISK OF NATO-RUSSIA CONFLICT’
Ex-Russian president warns increasing military support for Ukraine may lead to nuclear war
ONE of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies warned the West yesterday that the increasing military support given to Ukraine by the United States and its allies risked triggering a conflict between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation military alliance.
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, said such a conflict with Nato always carried the risk of turning into a full blown nuclear war.
Russia’s Feb 24 invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands of people, laid waste to swathes of its former Soviet neighbour and raised fears of the gravest confrontation between Russia and the US since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
“Nato countries pumping weapons into Ukraine, training troops to use Western equipment, sending in mercenaries and the exercises of Alliance countries near our borders increase the likelihood of a direct and open conflict between Nato and Russia,” Medvedev said in a Telegram post.
“Such a conflict always has the risk of turning into a full-fledged nuclear war. This will be a disastrous scenario for everyone.”
Russia and the US are by far the world’s biggest nuclear powers: Russia has some 6,257 nuclear warheads, while Nato’s three nuclear powers — the US, United Kingdom and France — have about 6,065 warheads combined, according to the Washingtonbased Arms Control Association.
Putin said the “special military operation” in Ukraine was necessary as the US was using Ukraine to threaten Russia and Moscow had to defend against the persecution of Russian-speaking people.
Putin, who said Ukraine and
Russia are essentially one people, casts the war as an inevitable confrontation with the US, which he accuses of threatening Russia by meddling in its backyard through Nato eastward enlargement.
Ukraine said it was fighting an imperial-style land grab and that Putin’s claims of genocide were nonsense. Kyiv said the invasion only strengthened the Ukrainian people’s wish to turn westwards out of Russia’s orbit.
Meanwhile in Stockholm, Sweden’s government planned to submit an application to join Nato next week, following neighbour Finland in rewriting its post-World War 2 security policy in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, daily Expressen said yesterday.
Sweden’s Parliament will debate the security situation on Monday and Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson will then call a special cabinet meeting where the formal
decision to apply will be taken, Expressen said, citing unnamed sources.
An application will be sent directly after that, assuming nothing unexpected occurs, sources told Expressen.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Sweden and Finland have both been widely expected to seek greater security by joining Nato and abandon decades of military non-alignment.
An all-party review of Swedish security policy is due to report its findings today and the ruling Social Democrats are still debating whether to switch policy and support an application. The party is due to take a decision on Sunday.
Earlier yesterday, Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto and Prime Minister Sanna Marin said the country must apply to join Nato “without delay”, heaping pressure on Sweden to follow suit.
Finland is Sweden’s closest military ally and the only other Nordic country not to be a member of Nato.
Meanwhile in Geneva, the United Nations Human Rights chief yesterday said a thousand bodies had been recovered in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in recent weeks, adding that many of the violations it was verifying since the Russian invasion might amount to war crimes.
“The scale of unlawful killings, including indicia of summary executions in areas to the north of Kyiv, is shocking,” Michelle Bachelet told the Geneva-based Human Rights Council via a video address.
The council was yesterday set to whether to task investigators with an official probe into the events that occurred in Kyiv and other regions in February and March.