A senior American military expert says Russian President Vladimir Putin is right to blame the United States for working to prolong the conflict in Ukraine.
Sean Spoonts, a US Navy veteran and editor-in-chief of the Special Operations Forces Report (SOFREP) website, said the goals of Washington and Kiev in the conflict contradict each other.
“It seems like while Ukraine would like to end the war quickly and decisively defeat Russian forces and drive them out of their country, US policy almost seems designed to prolong the conflict hoping to bring about the collapse of Russia itself, both militarily and economically,” he said.
“That goes a lot further than [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky’s goal, which is to simply get Russian armies out of his country and regain lost territories in Donbass, Lugansk and Crimea,” he added.
Putin on Tuesday accused the United States of attempting to prolong the conflict in Ukraine and seeking to destabilize the Asia-Pacific region, in a reference to the US interference in Taiwan.
"The situation in Ukraine shows that the US is trying to prolong this conflict. And they act in exactly the same way, fueling the potential for conflict in Asia, Africa, and Latin America," Putin said at the opening ceremony of the Moscow international security conference.
Washington is “using the people of Ukraine as cannon fodder”, he said, slamming the US for supplying weapons to Kiev. “They need conflicts to retain their hegemony,” he added.
Commenting on this, Dan Kovalik, an author and political commentator in Pennsylvania, said, “Of course, the US is trying to prolong the war in Ukraine to destabilize the region. The US has been provoking this conflict for eight years in order to draw the Russians into a war which would undermine and potentially destroy Russia.”