A top Russian official is warning of a “global tragedy” if allies continue to send weapons to Ukraine as the European war nears the one-year mark.
Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower house of Russia’s parliament, said that countries sending more powerful weapons could lead to “global tragedy that would destroy their countries.”
“Supplies of offensive weapons to the Kyiv regime would lead to a global catastrophe,” said Volodin on Sunday. “If Washington and NATO supply weapons that would be used for striking peaceful cities and making attempts to seize our territory as they threaten to do, it would trigger a retaliation with more powerful weapons.”
He claimed that the help provided to Ukraine by the U.S. and NATO has sparked an “awful war.”
Volodin, who’s also a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has held his current post since 2016; prior to that, he had a senior role in the presidential administration. Additionally, he is a member of Putin’s security council, which gives him regular access to the Russian leader.
This comes as experts in the U.S. express their fear that the Biden administration’s spending on overseas military aid could weaken our position should conflict erupt in other parts of the globe.
“For U.S. policy makers, the critical question regarding our policy towards Ukraine is quickly becoming more a what we can do for Ukraine, not necessarily what we should do,” said Dan Caldwell, a senior advisor to Concerned Veterans for America and vice president for foreign policy at Stand Together. “U.S. stockpiles of munitions are becoming dangerously depleted and it will take years for U.S. production capacity to catch up.”
Since President Joe Biden came into office, he has spent about $13 billion on security assistance for Ukraine. That includes over 1,400 stingers, over 8,500 javelins, 38 coveted High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), eight National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS), and thousands of electronic communications and surveillance systems, according to a fact sheet dated Oct. 4.
The U.S. has “pretty much run out of 155 millimeter Howitzers and 155 millimeter ammunition” after sending roughly 900,000 of the highly effective rounds to Ukraine, said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who formerly worked on defense budget and acquisition issues for the Department of Defense.
