NATO Chief’s Rhetoric About Russia’s Military ‘Prepares West for Ukraine’s Defeat’

Jens Stoltenberg acknowledged last month that Ukraine had failed to advance its front line over the past year despite NATO's "significant" support, urging the alliance not to underestimate Russia's defense capabilities.

Jens Stoltenberg is singing a different tune about Russia’s military in order to prepare public opinion in the West for Ukraine’s inevitable defeat, Nikolai Kostikin told Sputnik.

The policy of the collective West has also suffered a crushing defeat, the expert of the Bureau of Military-Political Analysis pointed out.

Earlier, the NATO Secretary General admitted that Russia had created a "very well-fortified line of defense," which has been difficult for Ukraine to overcome.

"I am very cautious when it comes to sitting in Brussels and judging those who make very difficult decisions on the battlefield. The Russian army had time to really settle down, building well-prepared defensive lines with huge minefields, trenches and obstacles for battle tanks. These defense lines are difficult to penetrate — especially if you don't have an air force that can truly support these operations," Stoltenberg said in an interview with DPA.

That marked a change in rhetoric. Earlier in the year Stoltenberg echoed remarks by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who claimed that "many see Russia’s military as the second-strongest in Ukraine."

Blinken assured the Kiev regime's Western patrons that the proxy war and sanctions imposed by the United States, the European Union, and their allies had "extremely degraded" Russia’s military.

Weighing in on the fallout from the self-harming sanctions targeting Russia, and the failed Kiev counteroffensive, Nikolai Kostikin suggested that the West’s military-industrial complex has "lost the competition to Russia and China, both in technology and its efficacy."

The pundit noted the timing of Stoltenberg's comments in a period when when Washington may now "try to involve Poland" and attempts to work out how to ensure the European Union (EU) is "removed from its list of geopolitical competitors once and for all." The US will do everything to "consolidate this status of the EU," Kostikin said.

The NATO Secretary General has changed his rhetoric toward Ukraine to help alliance members accept that Russia's demands for Kiev's neutrality will likely to be accepted in future peace talks, an expert told Sputnik in November.

"Now that it becomes evident that Ukraine is going to lose this conflict, Stoltenberg prepares the allies, especially European public opinion, to the fact that this condition of strict neutrality of Ukraine that has been continuously demanded by Russia since the early 1990s will have to be applied," said Belgian military expert Pierre Henrot.