According to an interview made public on Friday, the chief of NATO voiced concern that the combat in Ukraine would spiral out of hand and lead to a war between Russia and NATO.
In comments to the Norwegian network NRK, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned that if things go wrong, they “may go tragically wrong.”
“The conflict in Ukraine is horrific. It is also a conflict between NATO and Russia that has the potential to escalate into a full-fledged war, according to him. To prevent that, “We work on that every day.”
It is crucial to prevent a battle “that involves additional nations in Europe and becomes a full-fledged war in Europe,” former Norwegian Prime Minister Stoltenberg said in the interview. “There is no doubt that a full-fledged war is a possibility,” he added.
The Kremlin has charged NATO countries with inadvertently joining the fight by arming, training, and supplying military intelligence to Ukraine so that it might attack Russian forces.
President Vladimir Putin said in remarks that mirrored the escalating hostilities between Russia and the West that Moscow would consider deploying what he called the American concept of a preemptive strike.
“Speaking about a disarming strike, maybe it’s worth thinking about embracing the ideas created by our U.S. colleagues, their ways of securing their security,” he remarked.
The Kremlin expressed worry about American attempts to create the so-called Prompt Global Strike capability, which aims to hit an adversary’s strategic targets with precision-guided conventional weapons anywhere in the world within an hour, long before the conflict in Ukraine.
Putin said that such a strike might destroy command centers.
He claimed that Russia has hypersonic weapons that the U.S. hasn’t deployed and that Moscow’s precision-guided cruise missiles exceed comparable U.S. weaponry. He stated, “We are simply thinking about it, they weren’t reluctant to publicly talk about it during the previous years.”
Putin also expressed disappointment with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s recent remarks that Ukraine had time to get ready for the 2022 conflict thanks to a 2015 peace agreement for eastern Ukraine mediated by France and Germany.
It turned out that the other players in the process were deceiving us, contrary to what he had anticipated. “It turned out that they wanted to arm up Ukraine and get ready for war.”
Merkel’s remarks, according to Putin, proved that Russia had a good reason for starting what he refers to as the “special military operation” in Ukraine. “Maybe we ought to have begun it sooner,” he remarked.
He added that her remarks further damaged Russia’s faith in the West and complicated any potential peace negotiations.
We will eventually need to strike a deal, he remarked. “However, there is a trust issue following such claims. Trust is almost nonexistent. We are prepared for an agreement, as I have stated time and time again, but it makes us consider who we are working with.
Putin once more accused the West of using Ukraine as a weapon against his nation in separate remarks made via video link to the defense and security chiefs of various former Soviet countries.
He claimed that the West, has for many years “shamelessly plundered and drained out its riches, fostered genocide and terror in the Donbas, and practically transformed the country into a colony.” By continuing to provide Ukraine with guns and ammunition, deploying mercenaries, and driving it toward an impending suicide mission, it is now shamelessly using the Ukrainian people as cannon fodder and as a drive against Russia.
Ukrainians claim they are engaged in a freedom battle against an invading aggressor.
In a phone conversation with Volodymyr on Friday, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Zelensky “agreed on the necessity of preempting Russia’s disingenuous calls for a cease-fire,” according to Sunak’s office. “The prime minister emphasized that before any accord could be taken into consideration, the Kremlin had to remove its forces.”
On Friday, fierce fighting in eastern and southern Ukraine persisted, particularly in areas that Russia illegitimately acquired in September.
According to the presidential administration of Ukraine, within the past 24 hours, Russian bombardment has resulted in five civilian deaths and 13 further civilian injuries.
The governor of the Donetsk area, Pavlo Kyrylenko, claimed that despite suffering significant fatalities, the Russians continued to launch daily attacks on Bakhmut.
Kyrylenko remarked in broadcast remarks, “You can best describe those attacks as cannon fodder.” They are unable to advance since they mostly use infantry and less armor.
The regional governor of nearby Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, Serhiy Haidai, reported that the Ukrainian military was advancing towards Kreminna and Svatove with its counter-offensive.
By the end of the year, he expressed hope that Ukraine will retake Kreminna, and by the end of the winter, it will retake other parts of the region that Russia has been occupying since the war started.
Eight civilians were injured by Russian shelling in the south, according to Kherson regional governor Yaroslav Yanyshevych, and a children’s hospital and a mortuary were destroyed in Kherson, which Ukraine retook last month.
Russian forces shelled Nikopol and Chervonohryhorivka, which are located across the Dnieper River from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, in the nearby Zaporizhzhia area.
Russian bombardment, according to Zaporizhzhia Governor Valentyn Reznichenko, destroyed homes and electricity lines.
Gov. Oleh Syniehubov reported, that three civilians were hurt by Russian shelling in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine, and one of them later perished.
