Ukraine’s claim raises ‘apocalyptic’ risks: Ex-Russian president

Former president Dmitry Medvedev has raised concern regarding recent claims by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's senior aide, warning that if the West truly supports what Mikhail Podoliak says it does that signals an "apocalyptic" risk of the end of the world.

In an interview with Ukrainian TV on Monday, Zelensky's senior aide Podoliak claimed that Kiev's Western backers were now fully supportive of all of Kiev’s attempts to “destroy everything Russian.”

Moscow has no reason to doubt Podoliak's claim, and what he said indicated an increase in the risks of an all-out war between Russia and NATO, Medvedev said on Tuesday. "Sad, unfortunately. The prophecies of the Apocalypse are getting closer."

“If this is true, and there is no reason to doubt it now,” the former president and present deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council wrote on his Telegram channel.

“If this is true... then it constitutes direct, legally significant proof of the West's complicity in the war against Russia” and serves as a reasonable casus belli "and the opportunity for Russia to act within the jus ad bellum against everyone and everything in the NATO countries,” he added. 

Medvedev has repeatedly warned Kiev that Moscow would have to use a nuclear weapon if Ukrainian forces set foot on Russian territory. There would be "no other option" if Ukraine took "our land."

In related news, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday described Podoliak's claims as wishful thinking on behalf of like-minded advisers of Zelensky.

“Representatives of the Kiev regime want to believe that. And they certainly want to do everything possible and impossible to drag Western nations as deep as they can into this conflict,” Peskov said.

Peskov suggested that there is a “clash of points of view” in the leadership of the US and its allies regarding their degree and level of involvement and direct engagement in the Ukraine war against Russia.

Moscow has said that the collective West is waging a proxy war against the Russian nation, with the Ukrainian troops under Kiev's command merely providing the “cannon fodder” for the conflict.

Since Russia launched its special military operation in Eastern Ukraine to stop NATO’s westward encroachment, Kiev's backers have provided tens of billions of dollars of weapons and munitions to Ukrainian forces to achieve what some in Washington have declared as the West's objective which is the “strategic defeat” of Russia.

Russia’s Medvedev warns nuclear war ‘quite probable’ amid West's support for Ukraine

Medvedev also reiterated Moscow

In the Monday interview, Podoliak said, "Today, the absolute consensus among the countries that support us is that we can destroy everything Russian in the occupied territories.”

Podoliak also vowed that Ukrainian attacks deep inside Russia by “unknown drones” would increase.

Ukraine, typically, does not formally claim responsibility for the increasing number of drone attacks that have targeted Moscow and other Russian cities.

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