NEW YORK, January 11. /TASS/. The West needs to stop providing weapons to Ukraine and give up efforts to help it to win, Scott Ritter, a former UN inspector for the destruction of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, said in a speech at a conference of the Schiller Institute.
"The hope is to get the West to stop arming Ukraine, to get the West to walk away from any notion of the potential of Ukrainian victory, to get the West to accept the need and the necessity of mitigating the harm that has already been done," he said by video link.
He cautioned against forcing Russia to accept Western and Ukrainian terms at any talks.
"Any effort to compel Russia to a negotiated settlement would backfire and only engender a harsher response by Russia. Any effort by the West to compel Russia through force of arms would lead to an escalation that could very well result in a general nuclear war.