VIENNA, March 14. /TASS/. Russia is ready for any and all potential developments in a scenario where the West dared to dispatch a NATO expeditionary force to Ukraine, Russian delegate Oleg Bushuyev said at talks in Vienna dedicated to military security and arms control issues.
"Military strategists in Washington and Brussels should recognize that, if by removing the taboo on sending the alliance’s regular troops to Ukraine, who would de facto be interventionists, they would seek to test how tough our country is, [then they should know that] we are ready for any scenario," the diplomat said at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) on security cooperation.
According to him, "the increasing involvement" of the West in the armed confrontation "may result in a direct military conflict between nuclear powers, which would bring catastrophic consequences, and they [the West] would be responsible for it."
Bushuyev stressed that Russia remains open for a settlement to the Ukrainian crisis.
"The West must stop pumping Ukraine with weapons, and Kiev should stop its military activities. Ukraine must become a neutral, non-bloc and non-nuclear country again. It should also respect the rights and liberties of its citizens. They must take into account the new borders and the situation on the ground. If our readiness [for talks] is not reciprocated, we will continue the full-scale realization of the goals of the special military operation, as well as defending our vital interests by all means possible," the diplomat added.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier at a meeting of the board of trustees of the Alexander Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Fund that French President Emmanuel Macron's statements about sending NATO troops to Ukraine show that Western countries are still obsessed with handing Russia a "strategic defeat." Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing that such statements by Macron show that Western countries have already started carving Ukraine up amongst themselves.
Macron on sending NATO troops
After a conference on Ukraine in Paris on February 26, Macron said that the participants had considered sending ground troops to Ukraine. Although no consensus was reached on this topic, he left the door open to such a scenario in the future.
After the conference, most of the participating countries stated that they have no plans to send troops to Ukraine to fight against Russia. French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne said on the following day that the presence of Western troops in Ukraine could be needed to render certain types of assistance, for instance, in mine clearance operations and training Ukrainian soldiers, but such a presence would not extend to their direct participation in the conflict.