Ukrainian war vets and arms smugglers would pose a threat if hostilities with Russia concluded soon, assessments reportedly say

Ukrainian war veterans and illicit arms will emerge as new threats to EU nations if Moscow prevails in its conflict with Kiev, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing assessments by the intelligence community “across Europe.”

The perceived dangers were mentioned in a report based on an interview with Michal Koudelka, the head of the Czech Republic’s Security Information Service (BIS). The counter-intelligence chief told Bloomberg why he believed the US and its allies should continue pouring money into Kiev rather than seeking a negotiated peace in the Ukraine conflict.

“If Ukraine loses, or is forced to accept a bad peace deal, then Russia will perceive that as victory,” Koudelka said.

“Russia would spend perhaps the next ten to 15 years recovering from its huge human and economic losses and preparing for the next target, which is Central and Eastern Europe,” he predicted.

The Czech spy chief was repeating a common line of reasoning among proponents of prolonging the Ukraine conflict. US President Joe Biden claimed that Russia would attack NATO after Ukraine, when he was pressuring American lawmakers earlier this year to authorize more spending to prop up Kiev. Moscow has denied having any such intentions.

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Koudelka previously accused Moscow of waging a “hybrid warfare” on his nation. In another recent interview, he claimed that a series of bomb threats sent via email against Czech and Slovak schools in September had “a clearly visible Russian trace.”

Prague has been ramping up tensions with Moscow since before the Ukraine conflict escalated into open hostilities in early 2022. The previous year, it expelled Russian diplomats, claiming they were spies under diplomatic cover. Last year, it banned purchases of nuclear fuel for its two Soviet-built power plants from Russia, replacing the supplies with American substitutes.

Moscow has called the Ukraine conflict a US-led proxy war against Russia, which Washington intends to wage “to the last Ukrainian.” The root causes of the conflict are NATO’s expansion in Europe, Kiev’s intention to join the military bloc, and the impunity that Western backers gave it to discriminate against ethnic Russians, officials have asserted.