Retired General Jack Keane said on Wednesday that if China were to provide assistance to Russia during its invasion of Ukraine, it would could help escalate the conflict to a cold war.
“If China comes to the assistance of Russia and starts to provide them military assistance, that will be significant,” Keane said on WABC and John Catsimatidis’s “Cats at Night Show.” “I don’t believe the consequences are war with China and Russia, but it would likely push us much closer to a cold war to have China actively involved in assisting Russia.”
Keane also said that the Biden administration “slow rolls” the United States’ military assistance to Ukraine, noting that it may extend the war. He said that the United States is not sending advanced weapons to Ukraine “out of fear” that Russia will escalate the conflict.
“The administration slow rolls this and piecemeals it, and it actually extends the war and protract the war, and that falls into Putin’s hands, because he’s got more people than the Ukrainians have by a factor of three,” he said.
Keane said this delay in sending weapons systems has “handcuffed” the Ukrainians and prevented them from retaking their territory.
“This administration takes a knee every time they think about providing an advanced weapon system to Ukraine out of fear that Russia will escalate and use nuclear weapons,” he added. “So they’ve done this about nine times and Russia hasn’t escalated one bit.”
The United States has sent military aid to Ukraine since the onset of Russia’s invasion, including a recent commitment to send 31 Abrams tanks to the country. Ukraine has pushed for more military aid, including asking for F-16 fighter jets, but the U.S. has not said whether it has ruled out sending those jets.
Biden took an unexpected trip to Kyiv, Ukraine to met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over the weekend ahead of his trip to Poland to deliver remarks on the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion. In his speech in Warsaw, he reiterated that the U.S. and its European allies would continue to support Ukraine.