Sergei Chemezov, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, says the United States and its Western allies risk triggering a global war if Washington continues to “provoke” the conflict in Ukraine and allow Kiev to attack Russian territory.
His remarks to Reuters offer a rare insight into the thinking of Putin’s inner circle following a surprise Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, to which the president has promised a “dignified” response but has yet to say what that will entail.
Chemezov, the chief executive of Rostec, which supplies many of Russia’s weapons for the war, said Russia felt confident and had enough weapons after more than two years of what the Kremlin calls a special military operation (SVO) in Ukraine.
He reiterated the Kremlin’s position that the conflict is a battle between the West and Russia.
“In a situation where the West, led by the United States, provokes a war, we need to be ready,” Chemezov said in written responses to a request for an interview. “The third year of the special operation is underway — Russia feels confident.”
He said no one would give a timetable for the end of the war and accused the US of fomenting the conflict by supplying arms to Kiev and allowing attacks deep inside Russia.
“The further it goes, the greater the risk of the world being dragged into a global conflict. It seems strange, but Western countries do not seem to understand how much this worries them.”
The comments from Chemezov, a former KGB general who served with Putin in East Germany before the collapse of the Soviet Union, were sent to Reuters after the raid began.
Putin said last week that Russian forces will expel Ukrainian troops from Russian sovereign territory, but they will remain inside Russia.
He said in June that he could put conventional missiles on standby within striking distance of the United States and its European allies if they let Ukraine strike deeper into Russia with long-range Western weapons.
Putin presents the conflict in Ukraine as part of an existential battle against a decadent West that he says humiliated Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 by encroaching on what he sees as Moscow’s sphere of influence, including Ukraine.
The West, which has supplied Kiev with large quantities of weapons, rejects Moscow’s interpretation of the war as an unprovoked land grab by Russia.
Moscow says the West is involved in planning Ukraine’s attack on the Kursk region. Western powers, keen to avoid a direct military confrontation with Russia, have denied this and say Russia is fuelling the war.
Economic war
Chemezov, 71, was placed under US and European Union sanctions after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
He said it was a “myth” that there were empty shelves in Russian stores because of sanctions and rising defense spending.
“Go to any Russian supermarket and see for yourself – everything is fine with the ‘butter,’” he said. “Russia has enough ‘cannons.’ We have increased arms production many times over.”
The sanctions have disrupted supply chains, forcing Rostec to change delivery dates for the Yakovlev MC-21 aircraft and replace about 40 imported elements of the Superjet-100, but none of this is fatal for Russia or Rostec, he said.
The number of Rostec employees will increase by tens of thousands this year, he said, describing the exit from the Russian market of Western companies such as Boeing and Airbus as an “opportunity” for Rostec, for which he wanted to say “thank you”.
“We have gone through the main stress. We managed to extract advantages from the situation and draw the necessary conclusions. One of them is: there are no more joint business deals based on trust with Western countries,” Chemezov said.
Russia is the world’s third-largest arms exporter after the United States and France, although its share of the global market is expected to fall in 2023 because of the war in Ukraine, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
This content was originally published in Putin’s ally says the West risks provoking a global war over Ukraine on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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