Mothers in Britain will soon have to make an inconceivable choice – send their sons to fight against Russian soldiers in Europe, or suffer the end of Nato, Ukraine’s former foreign minister has said.
Dmytro Kuleba issued the warning only a few hours after Kyiv faced what he described as ‘the worst drone assault’ since the start of the invasion.
He spoke to Metro exclusively about Vladimir Putin’s goal to ‘expose’ the ‘falsehood’ of the collective security commitment that binds members of the military alliance, and Europe’s ‘weaknesses’.
The politician said: ‘Putin may invade Nato territory soon – so now what? Is Nato going to send a division to fight back?
‘The first day that Nato will spend on deliberating whether to trigger Article 5 or not, and how to respond, will be the end of the alliance.
‘The first day the EU – which is no big bother to England – is going to spend discussing its response to Russia, is going to be the end of it too.
‘This is what Putin is pursuing, because he hates Ukraine – but he deeply despises Europe too. It is a very deep conviction.’
Kuleba is not the only one to sound an alarm over the future of Europe and Nato.
Just last week, Nato secretary general Mark Rutte said Russia may be ready to attack the alliance within five years, calling for a ‘quantum leap’ in defence spending and industrial mobilisation to avert the conflict.
Putin’s war machine has been speeding up. On April 1, Russia launched its largest conscription drive with the goal of enlisting 160,000 men. Drone production has also been taking centre-stage.
Away from a military spend increase, Kuleba stressed that the ‘real focus’ should be on developing ‘the will to defend yourself’ in Europeans.
He said: ‘Many people believe that the real test for Nato is whether the US is going to fight for Europe.
‘The real test will be whether British mothers will actually accept that their sons have to die for Finland or Estonia or Poland. If they don’t, there is no Nato.
‘This is is how World War II started. “Why fight for Danzig [now the city of Gdańsk]? Let’s give it to Hitler, it is just a city in Poland. Why should we die for it?” That was the question asked by western European nations [at the time].
‘And this is exactly the question that Putin is going to pose to Nato. Europe is already spending money on weapons, but it has to do so much faster.
‘But the real question is, who is going to tell the voters that the threat of the war is real?’
Kuleba’s warnings come from a wealth of experience. Before the beginning of the war, no one in Ukraine – and the rest of Europe – did actually believe that Russia would invade and proceed to massacre tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers.
He also made the mistake of thinking that after a certain number of Russian losses in Ukraine – ‘like 10,000 and 20,000 soldiers’ – Putin would eventually withdraw.
It is estimated that there have been one million Russian soldiers killed and wounded since the conflict began in Feburary 2022.
It is this ‘same pattern of behaviour’ – blindly trusting that Putin ‘would not dare’ to attack – that Kuleba sees across Europe.
He said: ‘Telling the truth to people about the prospect of war in Europe is what requires more attention than anything else…
‘People in Britain or any other country can listen to what I’m saying or they can decide that I am a warmongering Ukrainian who is trying to pull them into my war.
‘I am perfectly fine with any choice they make. What I can say, what I can urge them, is not to repeat our mistakes.
‘The biggest mistake Ukraine made was that we did not believe that this can happen to us on this scale. We, in Ukraine, also believed that it is not going to happen to us because Putin would never dare to do it.
‘So this is the mistake that people are making. I look around in Europe and I just see the same pattern happening. The same pattern of behaviour.
‘Do you think that if Ukraine was able to attack airfields in Russia, 1,000 miles away from Ukraine, Russia is not able to attack any piece of infrastructure in any European country? That would be a very, very big mistake to think so.’
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