Russia has no ability to somehow significantly escalate the situation while it is waging a war against Ukraine, says Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Main Intelligence Agency of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

"I have been hearing all these myths about escalation since 2014. What is escalation when we are waging a completely conventional, combined arms war? – Absolutely all types of weapons that exist in the world have already been used. How else can the situation be escalated?" he said at the 20th annual YES meeting in Kyiv on September 13-14, organized by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation.

Budanov rejected the seriousness of the suggestion that Russian President Putin would provide much more assistance to countries and groups in the Middle East in order to escalate the war there.

"How will he help when he himself asks for help from others? How will he help globally? Yes, he can send a special forces unit, no problem. He can transfer, for example, 50 MANPADS. But what next? - Everyone is fighting here, the entire Russian army, everything that is produced goes straight from the conveyor to the front. Everything that they buy - by the way, no one gives them anything for free - everything goes to the front. How will they help?" the head of the Main Intelligence Agency of the Ministry of Defense argued his position.

"Globally, they can do nothing while the war in Ukraine is going on," he concluded.

The former head of the U.S. Central Command, partner and head of the Global Institute, General David Petraeus, expressed the opinion at YES that today there are no grounds to talk about the likelihood of Russia using even tactical nuclear weapons, not to mention strategic ones.

According to him, at the beginning of the war, there was a justified fear of the possibility of Russia using nuclear weapons, which led to a warning that in such a case the Black Sea Fleet would be destroyed.

In turn, US National Security Advisor Jacob Sullivan, commenting on Putin's latest threats that he would regard permission to use long-range missiles against Russia as NATO's direct entry into the war, noted that the U.S. takes into account the possibility of threats from Russia in its actions.

According to him, the U.S. looks at what the Russians say and do, and develops its policy accordingly in coordination with its allies and Ukraine.

At the same time, Sullivan emphasized that President Biden and his administration have repeatedly denied the assumption that they will be paralyzed by Russia's threats.

We have obviously sent huge amounts of aid to Ukraine despite threats from Russia, and we will continue to do so, he said.