“We should have given defensive lethal weapons to Ukraine. If we’d given them defensive weapons, many lives could have been saved. There are major human consequences here. …

“Ukraine is a work in progress by Putin. He has multiple channels to attack Ukraine, economically, politically, diplomatically, militarily. He wants to get sanctions lifted, so he’s not deepening his [overt] military activities into Ukraine. But every day there are shooting incidents. …

“He has a big game plan and that is to break up the European Union, a weakened NATO, restore Russia’s defensive area [Warsaw Pact] and control Ukraine and Belarus. He’s doing this through covert ops, sabotage in Ukraine, military aggression, the separatist movements, economics, diplomacy, buying people in the EU, and putting FSB money toward environmental groups to protest against fracking to keep Europe dependent on Russian oil and gas.”

– Gen. Wesley Clark (U.S. Army, ret.), former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, speaking in an interview with Diane Francis for The Atlantic Council. The interview was posted on www.atlanticcouncil.org on December 16.