World Is Walking Into WW3 With "Eyes Wide Open" - UN Chief Tells General Assembly

[Stone]

World Is Walking Into WW3 With "Eyes Wide Open" - UN Chief Tells General Assembly

ZH |  FEB 07, 2023

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned on Monday in a speech delivered before the 193-member UN General Assembly that the world is headed toward a "wider war" in Ukraine due to the ever-increasing risk of escalation.

"The prospects for peace keep diminishing," Guterres said. "The chances of further escalation and bloodshed keep growing." He then sounded the alarm that "I fear the world is not sleepwalking into a wider war. I fear it is doing so with its eyes wide open."

His starkly negative outlook for the crisis comes as Ukraine is warning that the Kremlin's largest offensive since the opening weeks of the war is looming, according to The New York Times, which further wrote:

The Ukrainian General Staff, which is responsible for military strategy, said in its daily battlefield update that the Russians fired on some two dozen towns and villages around Bakhmut, the ruined city that has become the focal point of Moscow’s campaign to seize all of the eastern area known as Donbas.

By many recent accounts the changes of Ukrainian forces holding on the Bakbmut look bleaker by the day, as Russian troops are busy encircling the strategic city in Donetsk.

Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said Monday that the battle for the east is rapidly "heating up" as the Russian side throws "new units into the battle and eradicating our towns and villages."

Last month Ukrainian leaders began warning their Western backers that Putin has ordered hundreds of thousands more troops to muster along the border for a major new offensive; but such a potential escalation has failed to materialize thus far.

Also of note is something President Zelensky said in an interview with Fox News days ago...

While discussing the broader war, the Ukrainian leader said "If Ukraine falls, it would be the start of World War 3" - given that this would trigger major Western powers jumping in to back Kyiv directly in a bigger collective effort to defeat Russia.