Ukrainian people are waking up to the fact that they have been betrayed by the West, Russian FM spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova © Sergey Guneev; RIA Novosti
The current frontline situation is “monstrous” and “catastrophic” for Kiev and nothing can save it at this stage, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in an interview with Sputnik radio station on Monday.
According to her, even promises by French President Emmanuel Macron to send Western troops into Ukraine will not be enough to change the minds of the Ukrainian people, who have started to wake up to the fact that they have been betrayed by the West.
The French leader had said this at a meeting of representatives from 20 Western nations, when Paris proposed the scenario of sending Western ground forces to Ukraine. Although a consensus on the proposal was not reached during that meeting, Macron has said that, in the future, such a scenario could not be ruled out.
Zakharova suggested that Macron’s statement was an attempt to send out a “bright” and “powerful statement that would somehow inspire people in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and in the ranks of Ukrainian citizens being driven to slaughter” that the West would help them.
However, according to the spokeswoman, the French leader’s statement has had the opposite effect, especially after a large number of NATO representatives publicly stated that they were in no way considering sending their own soldiers to fight for Ukraine.
“The signal was exactly the opposite – that they betrayed Ukraine and will continue to use and betray it,” she said.
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Countries that have officially dismissed any notion of sending their troops to fight for Kiev include the UK, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Italy, Finland and Sweden, among others. NATO’s own Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, has also shot down Macron’s statement, insisting that there are “no plans for NATO combat troops on the ground in Ukraine.”
Moscow, meanwhile, has warned that a direct conflict between Russia and NATO would become “inevitable” if the members of the US-led bloc decided to deploy their forces to Ukraine. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that those who have opposed the move appear to have arrived at a “sober assessment of the potential risks” and realized that such a decision would be “absolutely against the interests of those nations” and their people.
Russia has repeatedly stated that it considers the Ukraine conflict to be a Washington-orchestrated proxy war against Moscow, and has repeatedly warned that by supplying increasingly sophisticated weapons to Kiev, NATO members are drawing closer to a direct confrontation.
