MOSCOW, May 6. /TASS/. American assistance to Ukraine will harm the de-escalation process in Donbass, if there are supplies of lethal weapons. That will only result in the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics becoming even more alienated from Kiev, Chairman of the Russian State Duma (lower house) International Affairs Committee Leonid Slutsky told TASS on Thursday.
"US assistance to Ukraine will harm the de-escalation process in Donbass. The question is here what kind of assistance is that going to be? If the issue at hand is the supply of lethal weapons, then, evidently, saber-rattling will not help bring the DPR and LPR back to the zone of Kiev’s full influence," he said, commenting on remarks by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
He recalled that incumbent US President Joe Biden, during his tenure as Vice President in the Obama administration, "made considerable efforts to tear Ukraine away from Russia, to prevent [Ukraine’s] re-Sovietization, as [former US Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton said."
"The current assistance is still aimed exclusively at carrying out that concept. The United States has repeatedly demonstrated through its actions that it is not interested in a peaceful solution to the intra-Ukrainian conflict. It is advantageous for it to maintain an active military phase of the confrontation close to Russia’s borders," Slutsky stressed.
"The real objective is to contain Russia, not to help Ukraine," he pointed out.
Blinken said following talks with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in Kiev that Washington was exploring the possibility of beefing up security cooperation with Kiev and providing assistance to Ukraine. The US top diplomat added that the issue had been discussed at the recent NATO and G7 meetings.