Ukraine said the Russian foreign minister’s comments suggest that Moscow senses defeat
A girl held a photo of her father, who served with Ukraine’s territorial defense forces, at his funeral in Bucha, Ukraine, on Tuesday. ZOHRA BENSEMRA/REUTERS
James Marson
Updated April 26, 2022 1:34 pm ET
Russia’s top diplomat said the West was engaged in a proxy war with his country that could escalate into a world war with nuclear weapons, as Western nations elevated their commitment to helping Ukraine defend itself.
“The risk is serious, real. It should not be underestimated,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a Russian state-television interview broadcast Monday night. “Under no circumstances should a third world war be allowed to happen,” he said, adding that “there can be no winners in a nuclear war.”
Mr. Lavrov said the West was increasing the risk of a bigger conflict by providing arms to Ukraine: “NATO is, in essence, going to war with Russia through a proxy and arming that proxy.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Mr. Lavrov’s comments were aimed at scaring countries off supporting Ukraine. “This only means Moscow senses defeat in Ukraine,” he wrote on Twitter. “Therefore, the world must double down on supporting Ukraine so that we prevail and safeguard European and global security.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, speaking to reporters at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Tuesday, said “any bluster about the possible use of nuclear weapons is dangerous and unhelpful.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly raised the specter of nuclear war, invoking his country’s atomic arsenal in an effort to deter the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from getting involved in the conflict.
Russia’s attempt to oust Ukraine’s elected government through a rapid military invasion at the end of February failed, and Moscow is now focusing on trying to seize territory in Ukraine’s east with the help of mass artillery and aerial bombardments. Russian units were pushing southwest from the city of Izyum and attacking the village of Barvinskove, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said Tuesday.
The West is bolstering Ukraine with fresh supplies of weapons and ammunition in a bid to thwart Russia.
On Tuesday, Germany said it would refurbish and send to Ukraine decommissioned antiaircraft cannon tanks known as Flakpanzer Gepard, or Cheetah, ending its longstanding reluctance to give tanks to the country. Germany will provide about 50 of the German-made self-propelled guns, marking a major delivery of non-Soviet weapons systems by a Western country to Ukraine, two government officials said.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz last week said his government was treading carefully to avoid a nuclear war.
U.N. chief António Guterres, masked, met Tuesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, wearing a blue tie, met with counterparts from more than 40 nations in Germany on Tuesday.
The U.K. signaled a more aggressive stance toward Russia on Tuesday when a junior U.K. defense minister, James Heappey, said it was “completely legitimate” for Ukraine to use Western weapons to hit logistics and supply lines in Russia.
For months, the U.K. has provided weapons on the proviso that they are used to defend Ukraine from Russian attack rather than offensively.
“Things that the international community are now providing to Ukraine have the range to be used over the borders,” Mr. Heappey, who is U.K. minister for the armed forces, told Times Radio on Tuesday. “That is not necessarily a problem.”
Mr. Austin said Ukraine has received more than $5 billion of equipment to defend against Russian forces, including two U.S. packages of military aid worth $800 million each.
A day earlier, Mr. Austin said that the U.S. aims to see Russia’s military capabilities degraded and Ukraine’s strengthened to prevent Moscow from attempting to conquer territory by force in the future.
A soldier walked on an abandoned tank in Chernihiv, Ukraine, on Monday.
Chernihiv City Hospital #2, Ukraine, on Monday. The facility was shelled in mid-March.
“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Mr. Austin said after he and Secretary of State Antony Blinken became the highest-level U.S. officials to visit the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.
Mr. Austin on Tuesday met with other defense ministers, including Ukraine’s Oleksii Reznikov, and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at Ramstein Air Base. The topics on the agenda included updating the representatives of more than 40 countries about the latest intelligence from the battlefield in Ukraine, security assistance to Kyiv and strengthening NATO’s defense-industrial base in the long term to support Ukraine’s defense, a defense official said.
Speaking after the conference, Mr. Austin said that U.S. and European officials attending agreed to meet monthly, either virtually or in person, to discuss ways to support Ukraine.
The defense ministers were expected to address Ukraine’s need for what NATO considers to be nonstandard ammunition and weapons systems, as well as discussions about whether the former Soviet republic could shift toward standard NATO equipment, the official said. For example, howitzers designed to fire 152-mm rounds can’t accommodate the 155-mm caliber.
The focus on heavy artillery and armored vehicles comes as Russia removes some of its forces from around cities in northern Ukraine and focuses instead on the eastern Donbas region, in a high-stakes conflict on wide-open terrain. The United Nations’ refugee agency now estimates that 8.3 million people will flee Ukraine by year’s end, up from its forecasts in early March.
On the diplomatic front, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres met with Mr. Lavrov in Moscow on Tuesday. After the meeting, Mr. Lavrov blamed the war on NATO’s expansion and said the West was attempting to create an alternative global governance outside the U.N. Mr. Guterres called for group-led humanitarian corridors, particularly in the southern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, and for a swift end to the war. He is scheduled to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday.
Residents of the Kyiv-area village of Ozera hugged during a funeral service Tuesday for a man killed by Russian forces.
A Ukrainian soldier on an armored personnel carrier near Slovyansk, in eastern Ukraine, on Tuesday.
In a telephone call Tuesday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Mr. Putin said the last remaining Ukrainian troops in Mariupol would be spared and offered medical attention if they surrendered to the Russian occupying forces, the Kremlin said. Ukrainian officials have claimed that there are up to 2,000 Ukrainian fighters and over 1,000 civilians holed up in the Azovstal steel complex.
Ukrainian soldiers are distrustful of such offers since Russian troops opened fire on Ukrainian troops withdrawing from a surrounded city in Ukraine’s east in 2014 under a negotiated agreement, killing more than 100.
Mr. Putin told Mr. Erdogan that Mariupol, which has suffered immense death and destruction after two months of Russian shelling, was now entirely under Russian control, the Kremlin said.
The two leaders also discussed the safety of Turkish vessels in the Black Sea, which has been the stage of naval warfare between Ukraine and Russia, both of which have accused each other of releasing naval mines that have been threatening commercial shipping.
In his Monday night interview, Mr. Lavrov said there has been no progress in peace negotiations with Kyiv, but that the conflict would end in a treaty that would depend on the situation on the ground. A senior U.S. official said Monday the U.S. aimed to ensure that Ukraine “has the strongest possible hand” in any such peace negotiations.
As Mr. Putin’s army has faced fierce resistance from Ukrainian forces strengthened by large infusions of Western weaponry, concerns have grown in Washington and allied capitals that Russia could consider using a so-called tactical nuclear weapon to gain the upper hand on the battlefield.
Earlier this month, Russia further warned that it could station nuclear forces in and around Kaliningrad—a Russian exclave wedged between Lithuania and Poland—and bolster its military presence there if Finland and Sweden join the NATO alliance.
Finland and Sweden are considering joining NATO and will make a decision in the coming weeks. Both countries have a long tradition of military neutrality, but the Russian invasion has tilted public opinion and the political consensus in both countries toward seeking membership in the U.S.-led alliance.
—Bojan Pancevski, Max Colchester and Nancy A. Youssef contributed to this article.
A building partially destroyed by Russian bombardment in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.
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