Vyacheslav Volodin, a speaker of the Kremlin’s lower house of parliament, warned on Jan. 22 that sending additional offensive weapons to Ukraine “will lead to a global catastrophe.”
Volodin, 58, claimed that the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) continued support of Ukraine is pushing the world to a “terrible war,” noting countries that supply Kyiv with powerful weapons are risking their own destruction.
“If Washington and NATO countries supply weapons that will be used to strike civilian cities and attempt to seize our territories, as they threaten, this will lead to retaliatory measures using more powerful weapons,” Volodin said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
“Arguments that the nuclear powers have not previously used weapons of mass destruction in local conflicts are untenable,” he added. “Because these states did not face a situation where there was a threat to the security of their citizens and the territorial integrity of the country.”
Volodin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been a speaker of the State Duma, commonly known as the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia, since 2016.
The latest nuclear threat comes as Washington and NATO pledged billions of dollars in weapons for Ukraine last week.
The package does not include tanks, which has become a point of contention as Germany has indicated it will not send its own Leopard tanks to Ukraine unless the United States sends the Abrams.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) told ABC’s “This Week on Sunday” that the U.S. should send some of its Abrams tanks to Ukraine in the interest of overcoming Germany’s reluctance to share its own.
Ukraine Support Tracker
Last year, the United States committed about $50 billion in security, financial, and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, according to figures from Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research institute. As a single country, the U.S. has pledged the most aid to Kyiv by far.In comparison, the government that came in second place in 2022 was the United Kingdom, which pledged $7.5 billion to Ukraine, according to the database.
“This has changed in recent weeks, as the total value of EU commitments now exceeds those of the U.S.,” he continued. “The large new EU pledges are a welcome development, given the major role of this war for European security.”
Washington’s Total Spending
The United States has so far allocated $113 billion in assistance to Ukraine, of which $24.2 billion has been used for security assistance since the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.The massive U.S. spending on Ukraine has attracted criticism from some Republicans. Last month, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) argued that those funds could have benefited U.S. citizens.
“$100 billion to Ukraine. Let’s put that in perspective. That’s more than $200 million this year from each congressional district,” Massie wrote in a tweet on Dec. 21, 2022. “What could your congressman have done for your district with $200 million? How long will the kids in your district be paying interest on this debt?”