Sahra Wagenknecht, a German parliament member whose country is a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ally, issued a new warning over the possibility of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war spilling over into a nuclear confrontation.
Russian officials have regularly floated the possibility that Moscow could strike NATO members in response to the aid and weapons they have provided to Ukraine in the conflict.
According to Tass, a Russian state news agency, Wagenknecht, leader of Germany’s Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance – Reason and Justice party (BSW), in an interview with the Funke media group warned that if “NATO becomes party” to the war it will escalate into a “nuclear confrontation.”
“If NATO becomes a party to the conflict in Ukraine, it will get to a point where Russia will carry out a strike on military facilities in NATO territory,” Wagenknecht said. “After that, the conflict will soon escalate into nuclear confrontation because this is the only field where Russia is equal to NATO. This is why it is so crazy dangerous that we are allowing ourselves to be dragged deeper into the conflict.”
She continued: “The Russians kept sending messages that they don’t want to see the US army near their borders. In particular, many Western politicians pointed out that Ukraine’s integration into NATO’s military structures will lead to a war.”
Wagenknecht argued that Kyiv “was being rapidly dragged into the US zone of military influence,” and is why Russia started to take certain measures “before it’s too late.”
Meanwhile, a new military aid package worth roughly $1.5 billion (1.4 billion euros) was recently announced by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky emphasized the importance of maintaining aid levels to Ukraine next year.
Scholz highlighted that Germany is Ukraine’s biggest military supporter in Europe and the second largest overall after the U.S. He assured Zelensky that “it will stay that way.”
Scholz emphasized Germany’s commitment to air defense as part of the new aid package, which includes air defense systems, Gepard anti-aircraft guns, tanks, armored vehicles, combat drones, artillery ammunition and radar, with support from Belgium, Denmark and Norway.
Newsweek has reached out to Germany’s Foreign Ministry, NATO and Russia’s Ministry of Defense via email for comment.
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Wagenknecht’s ominous warnings echo those made by other prominent political figures about the conflict.
In the lead-up to his departure from his seven years of service, which ended on Thursday, Russian ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov previously spoke with Newsweek about the troubled state of relations between Moscow and Washington.
Antonov argued that “Washington is continuing a dangerous discussion about the possibility of giving Ukrainians a permission to strike deep into Russian territory with Western long-range missiles.”
Ukraine has long pressed the U.S. and the United Kingdom to drop the restriction on long-range weapons being used for strikes inside Russia over concerns that this would escalate the war.
Kyiv says it needs long-range weapons such as ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) to target air bases used by Russia’s warplanes that launch glide bombs against Ukraine often from deep inside Russian territory. British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles with a range of around 150 miles have been used against Russian targets in occupied Ukrainian territory only.
Such talk threatened to defy the latest ultimatum issued by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has repeatedly warned against external intervention since first ordering a “special military operation” into Ukraine in February 2022.
“They refuse to take into account the clear warnings of the President of the Russian Federation that a ‘green light’ for such attacks would mean NATO’s direct involvement in the conflict,” Antonov said, “with all the following conclusions on our part.”
In late September, Putin announced that his country would be reassessing its deterrence policy and warned that provocations by Ukraine and its allies could cross Moscow’s red line on the use of nuclear weapons.
These updated guidelines, the Russian leader said, would consider “aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state, as their joint attack on the Russian Federation.”
