NATO is sticking to its plan to contain Russia by sacrificing countless Ukrainian lives, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. His comments came after the bloc’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg argued that the alliance was trying to prevent further escalation of tensions with Russia.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Peskov pointed out that, no matter what statements come out of NATO, the bloc was originally conceived and structured in a way that “essentially make it an instrument of confrontation with Russia and a means of containing it.”
“So far, the alliance has not abandoned its plans to contain Russia and slaughter the Ukrainian people as ritual victims in the fight against Russia,” Peskov said, noting that Moscow was planning its course of action taking these realities into account.
During a press conference ahead of the meetings of NATO foreign ministers on Monday, Stoltenberg said the two main goals of the organization were the continued support of Kiev and preventing an escalation of the conflict that could lead to “a full-fledged war between Russia and NATO.”
One way the US-led bloc is preventing this from happening, according to Stoltenberg, is by sending a “clear signal” to Moscow that the alliance is ready to defend its territory by building up its armed forces on its eastern borders.
“We are doing this not to provoke a conflict, but to prevent it,” the NATO secretary general claimed.
Meanwhile, he also noted that the failure of Ukraine’s army to move the front line during its much-touted counteroffensive, despite “unprecedented” Western support, has shown that the bloc must “never underestimate Russia.”
So far, Kiev is believed to have lost as many as 103,000 troops since launching the ill-fated counteroffensive, according to the latest estimates by Russia’s Defense Ministry.
With Ukraine’s forces seemingly unable to reclaim lost territories, a growing number of Western officials have suggested that Kiev may have to seek a peace deal with Russia and concede its former territories.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has also suggested in an interview with Fox News that the conflict with Russia could be stopped if Kiev conceded Donbass and Crimea, but claimed that the country was “not ready” for such a peace deal.
Russia has for decades decried NATO’s expansion towards its borders, calling it a direct national security threat. Russian President Vladimir Putin has also repeatedly cited Ukraine’s potential accession to the US-led bloc as one of the key triggers for the military operation against Kiev.
Moscow has also insisted that the continued supply of Western weapons to Ukraine served as proof that the US and its NATO allies were waging a proxy war against Russia.