MOSCOW (Reuters): Russia said the West was playing with fire by considering allowing Ukraine to strike deep into Russia with Western missiles and cautioned the United States that World War Three would not be confined to Europe.
Ukraine attacked Russia’s western Kursk region on Aug. 6 and has carved out a slice of territory in the biggest foreign attack on Russia since World War Two. President Vladimir Putin said there would be a worthy response from Russia to the attack.
Sergei Lavrov, who has served as Putin’s foreign minister for more than 20 years, said that the West was seeking to escalate the Ukraine war and was “asking for trouble” by considering Ukrainian requests to loosen curbs on using foreign-supplied weapons.
Since invading Ukraine in 2022, Putin has repeatedly warned of the risk of a much broader war involving the world’s biggest nuclear powers, though he has said Russia does not want a conflict with the U.S.-led NATO alliance.
“We are now confirming once again that playing with fire – and they are like small children playing with matches – is a very dangerous thing for grown-up uncles and aunts who are entrusted with nuclear weapons in one or another Western country,” Lavrov told reporters in Moscow.
“Americans unequivocally associate conversations about Third World War as something that, God forbid, if it happens, will affect Europe exclusively,” Lavrov said.
In a way World War III is already in progress. WW III wouldn’t be like WW I and II involving huge armies and armaments in different fronts at a time resulting in mass killings and massive destruction . WW III is being fought incrementally by weakening potential adversaries by means of local and regional wars, economic and trade sanctions and restrictions and by many other hybrid means. Because of the mass destructive power of nuclear weapons, military blocs may have planned a different strategy of winning wars and neutralizing opponent powers by weakening potential adversaries through wars in instalment.