Russia said on Sunday that the latest US aid for Ukraine showed that Washington was wading much deeper into a war against Moscow that would end in a “fiasco” akin to the conflicts in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
This comes after the US House of Representatives on Saturday passed with broad bipartisan support a $95 billion legislative package providing security assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said it was clear that the United States wanted Ukraine “to fight to the last Ukrainian” including with attacks on Russian sovereign territory and civilians.
“Washington’s deeper and deeper immersion in the hybrid war against Russia will turn into a loud and humiliating fiasco for the United States such as Vietnam and Afghanistan,” Zakharova said. Russia, she said, will give “an unconditional and resolute response” to the U.S. move to get more involved in the Ukraine war.
The United States lost more than 58,000 military personnel in the 1955-75 Vietnam War, which ended with Communist North Vietnam’s victory and takeover of the South, while hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed. In the 2001-2021 war in Afghanistan, the US reported 2,459 dead and over 20,000 wounded in the conflict which ended with the withdrawal of US-led coalition forces and return to power of the Taliban. The Soviet Union lost 14,453 personnel in the 1979-1989 war in Afghanistan.
Last week, Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns warned that without more US military support Ukraine could lose on the battlefield, but that with support Kyiv’s forces could hold their own this year. The United States has repeatedly ruled out sending its own or other NATO-member troops to Ukraine, which is fighting a grinding artillery and drone war with Russia along a heavily fortified 1,000-km front.
Russia now controls about 18% of Ukraine and has been incrementally gaining ground since the failure of Kyiv’s 2023 counter-offensive to make any serious inroads against Russian troops dug in behind minefields patrolled by drones and guarded by heavy artillery. Ukraine has for months been begging the United States to release more money and weapons to help it fight, though Russian officials have asserted that U.S. aid will not change the ultimate course of the war.
Zakharova said that ordinary Ukrainians were being “forcibly driven to slaughter as “cannon fodder” but that the United States was now no longer betting on a Ukrainian victory against Russia. Washington, she said, was hoping Ukraine could hold on until the U.S. presidential election in November. The U.S. legislative package includes measures that would allow the U.S. to seize billions of dollars’ worth of Russian assets frozen by sanctions imposed on Moscow. That, said Zakharova, was simply “theft”, adding that the true beneficiaries of the whole package were US defence companies.
(With agency inputs)
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