Russia Has No Plans to Attack Any NATO Member – Ex Senior US Official

Those Western officials, both past and present, who blame Russia for the Ukrainian civil war, often present Moscow as an imminent threat to NATO member states, especially the Baltic nations. These concerns have no ground, Colin Powell's former chief of staff Lawrence B. Wilkerson maintains.

Russia has no plans to attack Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia or any member of the North Atlantic Alliance for that matter, the former senior US official told Radio Baltkom. This is the point Moscow has consistently made for months.

Yet Wilkerson is wary that a major conflict could grow out of an accident or a misunderstanding.

The Republican warned leaders in Washington, Paris, Berlin, London, Moscow and elsewhere against sparking a war and urged them to adhere to diplomacy. A new global conflict would be a catastrophe for the whole world, including the ones who provoked it, he asserted in an interview with the Latvian radio station.

Wilkerson served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell between 2002 and 2005. In 2003, he was responsible for reviewing the CIA intelligence information claiming that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. The data, he later realized was false, was used to justify the US invasion.

The former US official has been critical of Washington's policy in the Middle East for years. He currently maintains that the US invasion disrupted the power balance in the Persian Gulf leading to increased volatility in the region.