Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt told Newsmax on Thursday that after suffering yet another military embarrassment at the hands of Ukraine with the loss of its most advanced tank, Russia will likely ''involve itself with greater and more devastating weaponry.''
''They're desperate,'' Holt said on ''Eric Bolling: The Balance.'' ''They've already shown they have absolutely zero reservation about crimes against civilians — war crimes — and so we should take their threats of escalating to much higher classes of weaponry very seriously.''
Holt is deputy U.S. military representative to NATO, according to the Air Force.
Ukrainian forces reportedly destroyed the Kremlin's most advanced tank, the T-90M, on Wednesday — just days after it was deployed.
Illia Ponomarenko, the Kyiv Independent's defense reporter, posted an image of the fiery wreck after the tank was struck, according to the New York Post.
Newsweek reported that a statement on Ukraine's defense ministry website confirmed that the tank had been hit.
Holt also said that the international community is ''watching this May 9 date come up, when we're all in anticipation.''
Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to use the May 9 Victory Day celebrations, which mark the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945, to inform the Russian people that he is waging a war in Ukraine, not running a special military operation, according to Ben Wallace, the U.K's defense minister.
''Certainly, British intelligence is that there may be a formal declaration of war, or a great expansion to this war, possibly even beyond Ukraine's borders,'' Holt said.
Russia's top diplomat has warned Ukraine against provoking World War III and said the threat of a nuclear conflict ''should not be underestimated.''
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the end of April accused Ukrainian leaders of provoking Russia by asking NATO to become involved in the conflict and said NATO has effectively "entered into a war with Russia through proxies and is arming those proxies.''
''Everyone is reciting incantations that in no case can we allow World War III,'' he said in an interview on Russian television.
When asked if he thought the conflict in Ukraine would have happened on former President Donald Trump's watch, Holt said it wouldn't have.
''We were in a footing where we were actually controlling the board with sanctions, and we were standing by our partners and allies,'' he said. ''And if you look at the fall of Afghanistan, it really set us up to project weakness, and then we see what happens.''
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