MOSCOW. Feb 16 (Interfax) - By providing arms to Ukraine, Western nations could push Kyiv toward a violent path of resolving the Donbas problem, Deputy Secretary of the Russian Security Council Mikhail Popov said.
"When there are so many armed forces and military equipment concentrated in one region, one random shot may be enough for an armed conflict to break out with renewed vigor," Popov said in an interview.
"Saturating, even oversaturating Ukraine with various types of weapons might, unfortunately, nurture the illusion of invincibility in some senior officials of the defense ministry of the country, and members of the nationalist groups based in areas bordering the Luhansk and Donetsk republics, and could push them toward provoking an open military confrontation," Popov said.
"The provision of so-called defensive weapons to the Ukrainian army by a number of Western nations demonstrates these states' disregard for the lives of ordinary Ukrainians on both sides of the conflict in the east of the country," he said.