Ekaterina Blinova
© Sputnik / Victor Antonyuk
Following the Western press’ claims that Russia’s Ukraine operation has “stalled” and that Moscow may use “chemical or bio weapons” out of despair, US DoD sources told Newsweek and Reuters that neither assumption is right. Scott Ritter, former UN Weapons Inspector and WMD Whistleblower, has sat down with Sputnik to discuss the special operation.
Sputnik: Speaking to Maverick Multimedia on 19 March, you said that Russia’s special operation in Ukraine is “close to being over” in Russia’s favour and that Moscow’s military op will later be studied by specialists. What’s so special about Russia’s operation, in your opinion?
Scott Ritter: I think the thing that separates the Russian special operation in Ukraine, apart from other military operations of this nature, is the fact that Russia does not intend to occupy Ukraine. This is something that the Russian leadership has said from the very start. A military operation that is designed to occupy is a much more complicated operation requiring significantly more troops. It is about holding cities, holding roads, holding specific geographical areas.
The Russian operation is focused on two non-geographical military focuses of efforts. The first is denazification, the elimination of the right-wing neo-Nazi military formations and the political parties that support them, and also demilitarization, the elimination of the NATO military infrastructure that had been installed in Ukraine.
This kind of focus allows Russia to avoid the trap of being compelled to carry out operations to conquer territory, instead, to focus on a more specific task of eliminating military formations with the goal of eventually leaving Ukraine.
Azov battalion soldiers take oath in Kiev before being sent to Donbass
© Alexandr Maksimenko
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Sputnik: Why are the Western mainstream media continuing to claim that Russia’s Ukraine operation has stalled? Does it mean that they do not understand Russia’s strategy and objectives? Or does this narrative serve some other purposes?
Scott Ritter: I think there are two reasons why the West is mischaracterising the Russian military operation in Ukraine. First is that the West is evaluating this as if it were Russia’s intent to occupy Ukraine. From the very start, the fact that Russia is coming in with only 200,000 troops makes no military sense when we are speaking of a nation of 40 million people with a combined military capability of around 600,000 troops.
Normally you want a 3:1 advantage when you are on the offensive, and Russia is coming in with a 1:3 military advantage. And so people are looking at the map, looking at the progress being made by the Russian forces and they characterize it as being “stalled” because the Russians aren’t capturing Kiev, aren’t capturing Kharkov, aren’t conquering physical features on the ground. They’re not understanding that the Russian objective isn’t to conquer territory but to destroy military capability, which the Russians are doing quite well.
The other aspect of the mischaracterisation is that there is an information warfare aspect to this war. The West is hopeful that they will be able to use the Russian operation in Ukraine as a vehicle to motivate domestic political unrest in Russia that will at a minimum compel the Russian leadership to withdraw from Ukraine with its mission unfinished, and at a maximum lead to the overthrow, the removal of the Russian president and the Russian government, sort of a colour revolution, if you’d like to say so.
In order to do this, they are creating a picture of a military disaster in Ukraine on the part of the Russian military, and they’re trying to project this narrative of a military disaster back into Russia in an effort to demoralise the Russian population and provide the impetus for massive popular demonstrations against the Russian government.
DPR LPR Russia Ukraine Military Operation
© Sputnik / Валерий Мельников
Sputnik: Western pundits, politicians and experts are speculating about Russia’s “possible chemical attack” in Ukraine. They have not presented evidence that Russia possesses such weapons, nor provided any proof that such plans exist. What could be the primary purpose of this narrative?
Scott Ritter: The current narrative being put out by Western leaders and the Western media about the Russians preparing a chemical weapons attack in Ukraine is born of the standard reaction when one side is caught doing something that they shouldn’t have been doing and they seek to project blame onto the other side. There is no doubt in my mind that the Russians are not preparing a chemical weapons attack. This makes no sense from both a military and political standpoint. Plus, it presumes the existence of a military-scale chemical warfare capability in Russia that Russia simply doesn’t possess.
But what has happened is that Russia has discovered biological research facilities inside Ukraine, operated by the United States Department of Defense, and they’ve discovered certain research activities which are difficult to explain by the United States that could have offensive biological warfare capacity. And the United States is embarrassed by this.
So what the United States does is, rather than address the fact that it had an ongoing programme in Ukraine that has raised some questions, they deflect, saying that the reason why Russia is bringing this up is that Russia is preparing for a biological weapons attack.
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