Addressing the top brass on December 19, President Putin highlighted that the aggressive nature of NATO is no longer hidden. However, Russia is capable of protecting its sovereignty, the president pointed out, referring to new weapons systems, substantial increase in military production, and modernization of the nation's strategic nuclear forces.
"[The Russian president] is sending a serious message to NATO, proving as we have seen before, that Mr. Putin is usually the only adult in the room, and he tells the truth clearly as he sees it," Retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense, told Sputnik.
"As NATO attempts to foment conflict and expand eastward, it has proven incapable of effectively producing enough weapons for its own defense, much less that of Ukraine. NATO has evolved for a non-defensive forward-operating posture, it is under-supplied at the moment, it is very costly, and it is increasingly demographically, fiscally, and politically unsupportable by the US or most European countries," she continued.
During his Tuesday speech, the Russian president particularly stated that the Ukraine conflict has exposed the "vulnerabilities" of Western military hardware. Per Kwiatkowski, the US proxy war in Ukraine is waged with numerous flaws not limited to problems with the NATO-grade equipment.
"Ukraine, as a US-NATO proxy war, has demonstrated that piecemeal odd pieces of equipment from the inventories of 20 countries, shipped in small and shifting quantities, without a logistic tail that makes sense, and used by people who have never been exposed to NATO training, equipment and operations in a formal way does not work," Kwiatkowski said.
"When we look back on how NATO and the US shafted Ukraine since 2014, military analysts will be scratching their heads wondering why such an approach was taken by Obama and Biden. As I have observed before, as have others, pushing Ukraine to fight Russia with bucket loads of cash and leftover munitions and systems, from the 1950s to the 2000s, was part of a project unrelated to Ukraine's survival as a country," the former Pentagon analyst highlighted.
According to the expert, Washington actually sought to:
· prime US and NATO military spending for the next decade;
· gain US military industrial dominance over the new European military spending;
· subordinate Germany and the rest of Europe to the US energy trade;
· marginalize Russia politically and militarily.
Kwiatkowski is highly skeptical about the Biden administration's plan to rearm for a new offensive in 2025. "Biden's vision is fantasy," she said, adding that the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is also breathing its last.
"US military production is ramping up, but not fast enough to keep Ukraine afloat given the current situation in Ukraine, militarily and politically. 2024 will be a year of political conflict in Washington, and one that necessarily must focus on US domestic issues. Kiev is more corrupt and unstable than it has ever been, and the idea of a national re-arming is predicated on a national leadership that has credibility among the people. (…) Where would Ukraine get the 300,000 to 500,000 trained soldiers between the ages of 18 and 40 to fight again in 2025? That army alone cannot be rebuilt in a year. It also cannot be purchased," Kwiatkowski concluded.