Russia's Intelligence Chief: US Is At Risk Of Creating Second Vietnam For Himself

Russia's Intelligence Chief Sergei Naryshkin. (Wikimedia Commons/Have you guys?

JAKARTA - Russia's foreign intelligence chief told the United States on Thursday that Western support for Ukraine would turn the conflict into a "second Vietnam" and haunt Washington for years to come.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops to Ukraine in February 2022 to carry out what he called a special military operation, triggering a war that has killed or injured hundreds of thousands of people and led to the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West in six decades.

In response, Western countries have provided Ukraine with more than $246 billion in aid and weapons, but the retaliatory attacks of Ukraine, which began in May this year, have yet to provide expected results, while Russia still controls a fifth of Ukraine's territory.

"Ukraine will turn into a 'black hole' that absorbs more resources and humans," said Head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Agency (SVR) Sergei Naryshkin, in the journal "The Intelligence Operative".

"In the end, the US is at risk of creating a second Vietnam' for itself, and every new American government must try to deal with it," he said.

Earlier, US President Joe Biden had warned that a direct NATO-Russian confrontation could trigger a Third World War, despite repeatedly ruling out sending American troops to Ukraine.

The Vietnam war is actually a conflict of the East-West Cold War, where the United States is fighting alongside South Vietnamese forces against a northern country supported by communist powers of China and the Soviet Union.

The war, which killed millions of people, ended in 1975 with a victory for North Vietnam and an embarrassing defeat to the United States, which has lost more than 58,000 of its fighters and waged a strong anti-war movement in the country.

Separately, President Biden pleaded with Republicans on Wednesday to provide new military assistance to Ukraine.

"If (President) Putin takes over Ukraine, he will not stop there," President Biden said.

Then, President Biden added, "we will get something we are not looking for and we don't want right now: American troops are fighting Russian troops".