Attacks on supply routes and talks of chemical weapons in Ukraine show Russia is "getting desperate," H.R. McMaster says
Russia's intensifying onslaught on Ukraine suggests President Vladimir Putin and his military are becoming increasingly "desperate," said former White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, who is joining CBS News as a foreign policy and national security contributor.
Despite Russia's claims that it doesn't target civilians, its forces continue to attack urban areas, including a residential building outside Ukraine's capital where at least one person was killed and several others were wounded Monday. This comes a day after Russian missiles hit a Ukrainian military base less than 15 miles from the border with Poland, which is a member of NATO, killing at least 35 people.
McMaster, a retired lieutenant general who served in the Trump administration, said he expects Russia will do everything it can to try to intercept any humanitarian assistance or shipping of supplies and military equipment to Ukraine.
"What you're seeing is that Russia is really getting desperate — not only with this action to try to interdict the supply routes, but also with trying to lay the groundwork for, maybe, the use of chemical weapons, which is concerning," McMaster said Monday on "CBS Mornings."
Last week, Russia called a U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss what it called "the military biological activities of the U.S. on the territory of Ukraine." The White House denied the claim and denounced it as a "false flag effort."
"This is a real sign of weakness," McMaster said. "I think Russia — and Putin, in particular — is in real trouble."
Despite the escalating rhetoric on biological and nuclear weapons, McMaster said talking about a possible World War III is not helpful.
"It kind of plays into Putin's hand," he said. "What he's trying to do is to threaten an escalation of the war so that we will throttle back on our support for Ukraine."
McMaster also called out China for not condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine and said the West should use that to its advantage.
"What China's been doing is providing cover for Russia's mass murder of innocent civilians, spouting the same narrative that this isn't really a war, calling it a 'special military operation,' [and] also supporting these false claims of military bio-labs in Ukraine," McMaster said.
"And I think it's a tremendous moment for the free world to shift the balance back in favor of the free world and away from these two authoritarian dictatorships," he said.
Russian and Ukrainian officials were set to meet Monday for a fourth round of talks, according to a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.