Western attempts to exhaust Russia in the Ukraine conflict could backfire, Sergey Naryshkin has said
By backing Kiev in its fight with Moscow, the US risks sleepwalking into another Vietnam War-style debacle, Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), has said.
In an opinion piece for Razvedchik magazine issued by the SVR and published on Thursday, Naryshkin predicted tectonic geopolitical shifts in the coming year, which he said would be marked by an intensified confrontation between the West and those countries that oppose its hegemony.
The intelligence chief suggested that the Western bloc would try to defend the dominance that is slipping from its grasp, with the ripples of the struggle likely to spread across the world.
The West will be particularly focused on the Ukraine conflict, Naryshkin said, predicting that it “would try to prolong the fighting as much as possible” in a bid to turn hostilities into “a second Afghanistan” and defeat Russia in a battle of attrition, using unprecedented sanctions and pumping Kiev with weapons.
However, he warned that there is a high chance that continued support for the “Kiev junta” – given that the Ukraine conflict is becoming an increasingly “toxic” issue in the eyes of the global community – would lead to a rapid erosion of Western authority.
The further we go, the more Ukraine will turn into a ‘black hole’, absorbing material and human resources. In the end, the US risks bringing upon itself a ‘second Vietnam’.”
According to Naryshkin, should this come to pass, every US administration will have to deal with this conundrum until “a more or less reasonable person comes to power in Washington” with enough courage and determination to extinguish the crisis.