Ritter Claims West Backed Ukraine to Attack Putin's Helicopter
(MENAFN) Former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter has suggested that Ukraine must have received Western support if it truly aimed to strike a helicopter carrying Russian Leader Vladimir Putin.
Ritter shared his assessment during an interview with a news agency, implying that Kyiv could not have executed such a bold operation without significant outside help.
According to Yury Dashkin, a commander in the Russian air defense forces, the Russian president's helicopter was caught in the "epicenter" of a large-scale drone offensive by Ukraine during a visit to Russia’s Kursk Region on May 20.
Dashkin explained on a Russian TV channel that aerial threats “increased significantly” while Putin was airborne, with 46 fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles intercepted and neutralized in the region.
During his conversation with the news agency on Wednesday, Ritter emphasized that “if the Ukrainians drones actually targeted the Russian president, they did not do so in a vacuum... there would have been assistance provided by the West, which means that the West is targeting the Russian president.”
He warned that this kind of involvement would signify a deeply provocative act.
Ritter also highlighted the seriousness of such a scenario by pointing to Russian defense policy, noting that according to Russia’s nuclear doctrine, an attack on its leadership could justify a nuclear response—either retaliatory or preemptive.
He questioned the narrative that blames Putin for escalating tensions, stating, “It is not Vladimir Putin who is playing with fire. It is Ukraine and the West that are playing with fire.”
His remark was partly in response to a recent statement by United States Leader Donald Trump, who had accused Putin of “playing with fire.”
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