Ukraine would have required Western assistance if it indeed attempted to target a helicopter carrying Russian President Vladimir Putin, former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter said in an interview with RT.
Ritter's comments follow a recent revelation by Russian air defense commander Yury Dashkin, who told the Russia 1 television channel that President Putin’s helicopter was at the “epicenter” of a major Ukrainian drone incursion during his visit to Russia’s Kursk Region on May 20. According to Dashkin, 46 fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were intercepted in the area, with a noticeable spike in drone activity coinciding with the president’s presence.
“If the Ukrainian drones actually targeted the Russian president, they did not do so in a vacuum,” Ritter told RT on Wednesday. “There would have been assistance provided by the West, which means that the West is targeting the Russian president.”
Ritter further warned of the potential consequences, referencing Russia’s nuclear doctrine: “If you read the Russian nuclear doctrine, this is a trigger for Russian nuclear retaliation or preemptive strikes. So, who is playing with fire here? It is not Vladimir Putin who is playing with fire. It is Ukraine and the West that are playing with fire.”
His remarks came in response to a statement by U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this week, in which Trump accused Putin of “playing with fire.” The former U.S. president was referring to a wave of Russian retaliatory strikes against Ukrainian military facilities, which Moscow claims were in response to Kyiv’s intensified drone attacks on civilian areas within Russia. The Russian Ministry of Defense reported intercepting more than 2,300 Ukrainian drones in the past week alone, many of them far from the front lines.
Ritter expressed concern over what he described as a divided U.S. policy landscape, with factions split between adversarial and conciliatory approaches to Russia. He also criticized the level of expertise within the U.S. administration.
“The U.S. president is a victim of basically the last words whispered into his ear before he goes to bed at night or the first words whispered into his ear when he wakes up in the morning… Trump is not well briefed [on Russia]. Look, this is a very dangerous situation,” he cautioned.
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