WASHINGTON – The US administration admits that its military aid to Ukraine depletes Western arsenals and creates additional pressure on their defense industries, US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl told the Washington-based Defense Writers Group, where TASS is a participant.
When asked to comment on the long-term consequences of the US military aid to Kiev, the official said: "There's no question that it has put pressure on our own stockpiles, it has put pressure on our defense industrial base. That's been true of our allies."
"I will say, [US Defense] Secretary [Lloyd] Austin has been laser focused since the beginning in making sure that we were not taking undue risk, that is that we weren't drawing down our stockpile so much that it would undermine our readiness and our ability to respond to another major contingency elsewhere in the world," he added.
At the same time, the high-ranking Pentagon official assured that the military aid to Ukraine was in no way undermining US defense capabilities.
"So, I am comfortable that the support we have provided to Ukraine has not put the United States in a dangerous position as it relates to another major contingency somewhere in the world, but it has revealed that we have work to do to make our defense industrial base more nimble, more responsive, more resilient," he added.
On Feb. 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that, in response to a request from the Donbass republics, he made a decision to carry out a special military operation in Ukraine.
He underscored that Moscow does not plan to occupy Ukrainian territories, instead planning to demilitarize and denazify the country.
In response, the West started introducing sweeping sanctions against Russia and shipping weapons and military vehicles to Kiev already worth tens of billions of dollars at this point.
A number of Western political figures acknowledged that this was effectively an economic war against Russia. On March 16, Putin said the Western sanctions policy against Moscow had all hallmarks of aggression, adding that the policy of deterrence of Russia has been the long-term strategy of the West.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other Russian officials have repeatedly warned about the possibility of Western-supplied weapons spreading from Ukraine to other regions.
Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov said Western attempts to militarize Ukraine are posing a direct threat to European and global security. (TASS)
