A top Vladimir Putin ally has just claimed the West is on the cusp of triggering global war after allowing Ukraine to attack Russia.
Sergei Chemezov, the head of the Russian state corporation which supplies Moscow with many of its arms for the war, Rostec, told Reuters news agency that the country “feels confident” at the prospect of a wider conflict.
In a series of written replies to Reuters, the former KGB general said: “In a situation where the West, led by the United States, provokes war, we must be ready.
“The third year of the special operation is under way – Russia feels confident.”
The “special military operation” is what Moscow calls its illegal invasion of Ukraine.
Moscow is yet to successfully remove the Ukrainian troops from their occupation in the Kursk region more than two weeks after it began.
And, more than two years since launching its land grab, Russia has only seized 18% of Ukraine’s territory as its own.
But Chemezov is not the only person boasting about Russia’s abilities recently – Putin just told some of his troops that “we are absolutely, absolutely invincible”.
The Russian president has repeatedly vowed to exact a “worthy” response against Ukraine over its incursion, although he is yet to explain what that would entail.
Chemezov also doubled down on his threats to the West.
He said: “The further it [the war] goes, the greater the risk that the world will be drawn into a global conflict.
“It looks strange, but Western countries do not seem to understand how fraught this is for them.”
He added that no one has a time frame for when the war might end, but blamed the West for supplying Ukraine with weapons and allowing it to attack Russia.
Chemezov also told Reuters it was a “myth” there were empty shelves in Russian shops due to the Western sanctions against Moscow.
He claimed: “Russia has enough ‘canon’. We have increased the production of weapons many times over.”
“We have passed the main stress. We managed to extract advantages from the situation and draw the necessary conclusions. One of them is: no more joint business based on trust with Western countries.”
Putin has repeatedly depicted the Ukraine conflict as part of a battle with a declining “neoliberal” West who tried to turn Kyiv against Russia.
But, the West – keen not to escalate the war into a global conflict – has rejected this notion and insists the invasion of Ukraine as a land grab.