MOSCOW: Russia said on Sunday US lawmakers’ support for nearly $61 billion more in aid for Ukraine showed that Washington was wading much deeper into a hybrid war against Moscow that would end in humiliation on a par with the Vietnam or Afghanistan conflicts. Prez Vladimir Putin’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine has touched off the worst fall-out in relations between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, according to Russian and US diplomats.On Saturday, the US House of Representatives passed with broad bipartisan support a $95 billion legislative package providing security assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said it was clear that the US wanted Ukraine “to fight to the last Ukrainian” including with attacks on Russian sovereign territory and civilians. “Washington’s deeper and deeper immersion in the hybrid war against Russia will turn into a loud and humiliating fiasco for US such as Vietnam and Afghanistan,” Zakharova said. Russia, she said, will give “an unconditional and resolute response” to the US move to get more involved in the Ukraine war.
The US lost more than 58,000 military personnel in the 1955-75 Vietnam War, which ended with Communist North Vietnam’s victory and takeover of the South, while hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed. In the 2001-2021 war in Afghanistan, the US reported 2,459 dead and over 20,000 wounded in the conflict which ended with the withdrawal of US-led coalition forces.