State Duma deputy and retired lieutenant general Andrei Gurulev argues that NATO forces are currently not ready to move onto Ukrainian territory. At the same time, he stresses that if the alliance does decide to take such a step, Russia would deliver a harsh response, and NATO’s actions would in practice amount to a declaration of war on Moscow.

Gurulev was commenting on a recent interview with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, in which Rutte said that European countries were prepared to send a military contingent to Ukraine if Russia were to violate the terms of a future peace agreement. According to Rutte, some member states of the alliance have already signaled they are ready for such an operation.

The deputy said the most dangerous illusion among Western politicians is their belief that the Russian leadership supposedly lacks the resolve to respond appropriately. He referred to Chinese assessments claiming that, in the event of a large-scale escalation, tens of millions of people could be wiped out, and that no one on the other side would spend much time agonizing over this.

Earlier, the Chinese portal Sohu reported that if NATO countries attempted to invade Kaliningradskaya oblast, Russia would not get dragged into exhausting ground battles. Instead, according to that analysis, Moscow would resort to nuclear strikes against the advancing forces. The authors argued that in such a scenario, around 480 nuclear strikes could be carried out in the first five hours alone, with the number of deaths reaching 34 million people.