BERLIN, May 29. /TASS/. Western countries will become a party to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia if they send their troops to Ukraine, Ralph Thiele, a retired colonel of the German army who formerly served in the personal staff of the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said.

According to his estimates, if Western countries send their military units to Ukraine, they will take over the key tasks of the Ukrainian armed forces. "They will become a party to the conflict and also, in the foreseeable future, a target for Russian attacks," the expert wrote for the German website Focus-online.

According to Thiele, this would be the beginning of the West's participation in an armed confrontation, which the majority of German residents, as well as Chancellor Olaf Scholz, don’t want to happen. In addition, as the expert points out, for US President Joe Biden, such a turn of events would mean entering into World War III, something neither he nor the country wants.

NATO countries are divided on deploying troops to Ukraine, but still, this scenario cannot be ruled out, Konstantin Gavrilov, head of Russia’s delegation to the Vienna talks on military security and arms control, told TASS on Monday.

According to the diplomat, against the backdrop of Kiev's military failures and the advance of the Russian Armed Forces, NATO states are increasingly realizing the impossibility of inflicting a "strategic defeat" on Russia.

Earlier, the alliance's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, speaking at a session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, said that there should be no troops from NATO states on the ground or in the skies of Ukraine, otherwise it would be very difficult to keep the alliance out of the conflict.