BEIJING, April 27. /TASS/. Prolonging hostilities in Ukraine could lead to extremely negative consequences and cause war throughout Europe, Chinese military expert Song Zhongping said on Wednesday.

"Russia has made it clear unequivocally that it cannot lose. If both sides continue to be tough, the fighting could unfold all over Europe, which would be a huge disaster for all European states, as well as for the whole world," the Global Times quoted him as saying.

According to Song Zhongping, the US has "in fact turned Ukraine into a NATO member state." "After all, never before has any member of the alliance received so much support from the United States, especially in terms of arms," the expert stressed.

His colleague Zhang Hong, an Eastern European studies expert from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that Kiev "is trying to drag Moscow into a long war in order to deplete Russia's economic and military power." According to him, Ukraine thus hopes that in the end Russia will be forced to withdraw its troops. He said that a protracted war in Ukraine threatens to lead to "unimaginable consequences," noting also the likelihood of the use of nuclear weapons.

Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recalled that in January the five permanent members of the UN Security Council made a statement on the inadmissibility of nuclear war. "This is our principled position, we are guided by this, and of course I would not want to see these risks artificially inflated now, when the risks are rather significant. The danger is serious, it is real, it should not be underestimated," Lavrov said.