© Sergey Guneev; RIA NovostiRussian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova
Nothing can save Kiev from the "monstrous" and "catastrophic" situation its forces face on the frontline, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed in an interview with Sputnik radio on Monday.
Even comments by French President Emmanuel Macron that sending Western troops into Ukraine was not out of the question 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, she added.
The French leader made the comment 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.
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.
Perhaps you remember the outry over Trump's remarks lately, that he would not come to the rescue of countries that have not payed their duties for Nato finances.
This is a core problem of the EU - they neglected their military and their defense industry for the last three decades, at the expense of the US. Now they have neither the manpower nor the materiel to stand the slightest chance against Russia. Nor do they have the industrial capacity for to sustain a conflict for more than two weeks.
Nato (and in extension the US) have always been a German-style Blitzkrieg army, geared towards conflict against third-rate militaries and counter-insurgency. At least since the end of the cold war.
Now that the "perfidious Russians" have drained they materiel to dangerously low levels through their prolonged Ukraine conflict, they are unable to do anything in this regard.
Except blustering ...