BEIJING, May 25. /TASS/. US authorities are trying to deny their responsibility for the Ukrainian crisis and seek to evade direct conflict with Russia by portraying what is happening in Ukraine as "just a military confrontation between Moscow and Kiev", Zhang Tengjun, Deputy Director of Department for Asia-Pacific Studies at the China Institute of International Studies, said on Wednesday.

"The US is trying to portray the conflict as a war between Russia and Ukraine so that it can take itself out as much as possible," the Global Times quoted him as saying, commenting on a recent statement by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin about the Ukrainian side's "independence" in formulating objectives in combat operations against Russia.

According to the expert, Washington "is not ready to confront Moscow head-on." "What Austin tries to highlight is to avoid sending a wrong signal to Russia that may trigger a larger conflict between the two," he clarified.

According to Song Zhongping, a respected Chinese strategic weapons expert, the successful actions of Russian troops in Mariupol were a turning point in Russia's special military operation to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. "The US is watching closely and anxiously the development of the war, as the situation is favoring Russia," he stressed.

Chinese experts believe that the United States has a strong interest in ensuring that Russia "suffers a heavy defeat" in the Ukrainian conflict, which started with Washington's assistance. Chinese political scientists and military experts remind that Ukraine is not officially a NATO member or an ally of the United States, but the White House, despite this, considers itself entitled to insist that "the war with Russia is fought to the last Ukrainian."

As Lloyd Austin said on Monday, the Pentagon will not formulate combat tasks for Kiev and the Ukrainian side must make such decisions itself. At the same time, he added that the White House would "do everything that we can to strengthen Ukraine's hands on the battlefield, and also at the negotiation table".