Ukrainian expert says US statements on lethal arms supplies to Ukraine are mere bluffing

KIEV, February 9. /TASS/. The United States’ statements on possible supplies of lethal weapons to Ukraine are mere bluffing seeking to exert pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin, a Ukrainian political expert told TASS on Monday.

"It is just a kind of poker bidding up, it is a bluff, an attempt to press Putin to be more tractable," Ruslan Bortnik, the director of the Ukrainian Institute of Policy Analysis and Management, said, commenting on statements by US top-ranking officials on the necessity to supply arms to Ukraine.

Bortnik said he is sure the Americans will not begin weapons supplies to Ukraine. "Of course not," he said when asked. "It might trigger an arms race bound to end up in Ukraine’s complete military defeat," he added.

"Supplies of such arms can be blocked in the United States, like in Germany. American generals are wise enough to allow for the logic of developments," he noted.

"The United States wants to spur on militarist rhetoric and Ukraine’s radical forces, hoping that in the worst case scenario Europe’s interests will be damaged, Russia’s interests will be damaged but the United States will be the gainer in any event, like it was after the Second World War," he said.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference on February 7, US Senator John McCain urged to begin supplies of weapons to the Ukrainian army. But, as a number of mass media noted summing up the results of the Munich conference, the conference demonstrated that neither Berlin, nor London, nor Paris wanted to solve the Ukrainian crisis by imposing sanctions on Russia whereas Washington pressed for lethal arms supplies to Ukraine. At the same time, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that Brussels and Washington shared the opinion that there was no military solution to the Ukrainian conflict.