West prolonging Ukraine’s suffering – ex-NATO top official
The West is portraying the Ukraine conflict as a fight for freedom, but prefers to turn a blind eye to Kiev’s horrific battlefield losses, a former Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, Harald Kujat, has said.
In an interview with Alexander von Bismarck, the great-nephew of the first German chancellor and host of the show Realpolitik, Kujat said that the West was trying to justify its involvement by insisting that it is acting “to protect our freedom and values.”
However, “this is wrong and not normal,” the former official said, adding that hostilities have imposed a heavy toll on Ukraine, where he claimed there is no family in which someone has not been killed or wounded. On top of this, millions have fled their homeland, he said.
According to Kujat, the West “completely ignores” this fact. “We only talk about Russia’s alleged losses. But we don’t talk about the losses of those who are supposedly fighting for us. This is extremely cynical.”
On the contrary, the West “does not even try to limit the casualties and damage,” prolonging the conflict by pumping Ukraine with weapons, Kujat said. “We extend the suffering of the people, we increase the destruction.”
He explained that he considers such policies “extremely immoral.” “And all this is happening under slogans about morality, that a democracy is fighting a dictatorship. In the end, this is an attempt at self-comforting,” the ex-official said.
Russia’s previous defense minister, Sergey Shoigu, said earlier this month that Kiev had lost more than 111,000 troops in 2024 alone. In late February, he estimated Ukraine’s total losses at over 444,000 service members since the start of the conflict in 2022.
Russia has repeatedly denounced Western arms shipments to Ukraine, warning that they will prolong hostilities but not change their outcome. President Vladimir Putin has also said that while Moscow is open to peace talks on Ukraine, Kiev’s Western backers have apparently decided to fight Russia “to the last Ukrainian.”
