It is "naive" to think that Russian President Vladimir Putin will stop the war against Ukraine any time soon, as he needs the hostilities to go on, Oleksandr Danylyuk, the former Secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, said in a Newsmax interview Saturday.
"There are a lot of pretty naive people in both Ukraine and in the west who believe that Putin is going to stop this war," Danylyuk told Newsmax's "America Right Now," speaking from Ukraine. "It's a huge mistake."
Putin needs the war because it allows him to "concentrate at least some popularity around him as the world leader," Danylyuk said. "It provides him a possibility to oppress the opposition inside not only, the country in general but in the inner circle in the Kremlin."
The former secretary also said he thinks Putin will call soon for a larger war, but he'll need "some sort of provocation" for that and may claim that Russia has been attacked.
"I'm afraid that Russian secret services will provide some (kind) of fake events, some false flag events to give him this chance," he added.
Danylyuk further commented on the Russian campaign for the "complete demolition of Ukrainian cities and villages," noting that most of the villages and cities that were in place before the battle for Donbas no longer exist.
"It's terrible," he said. "People who used to live in those cities and villages have no home to come back to."
Meanwhile, as the war continues, Ukraine not only needs more weapons but needs to conduct "serious psychological operations inside of the Russian society," said Danylyuk. "We need to sit and discuss it immediately."
He also discussed reports from British and Ukrainian intelligence this week which reported that Russia is starting hybrid warfare attacks in Moldova, potentially to soften the country for an invasion, telling Newsmax that it is difficult to anticipate Putin's plans "because there is no logic in a lot of them.:"
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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