Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that if NATO authorizes Ukraine to use long-range missiles to hit targets on Russian territory it will mean Ukraine will be at war with Russia.
“If this decision is made, it will mean nothing other than the direct participation of NATO countries, the US and European countries in the war in Ukraine (…), it will mean that NATO countries, the US and European countries are fighting against Russia,” Putin told state television after speaking at a cultural forum in St. Petersburg.
Putin stressed that this decision would change “the very nature of the conflict,” meaning that it would no longer be limited to a war between the Russian and Ukrainian armies. “If that is the case (…), we will make the corresponding decisions based on the threats they pose to us,” he said.
He insisted that NATO was not actually authorising Kiev to use such long-range missiles, whether ATCAMS or Storm Shadow, as the Ukrainian army did not have the technical capability to do so. Putin said, relying on the alleged opinion of Russian and Western experts, that such missiles could only be launched against Russian territory with the help of intelligence data from US satellites or EU countries, as Ukraine does not have them. “And the most important thing is that, in fact, flight missions can only be determined by the military of NATO countries,” he said.
This is not the first time that Putin has lashed out at Ukraine’s allies for their military support to defend the country against an invasion by his troops. Experts believe that the Kremlin has already repeatedly invoked threats to induce fear among decision-makers and influence Western public opinion.
Last May, the Kremlin chief had already used the same argument against the use of Western weapons against targets on Russian territory. He warned European countries of “serious consequences”, referring to the fact that, normally, “these are states with small but densely populated territories”.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the West had long given Ukraine permission to attack Russian territory with long-range missiles. Lavrov described the visit to Kiev on Wednesday by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who reportedly discussed the issue with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as a “staged show.”
“The number of (Ukrainian) attacks on civilian targets and the number of shots fired at civilians is increasing dramatically every day. (…) Western military specialists literally manually coordinate attacks with high-precision weapons,” he said.
He also accused NATO of supplying Kiev with data from its intelligence satellites, which are used to “strike targets inside Russian territory”, including energy and industrial infrastructure, but also homes, schools and hospitals.
During their visit to kyiv, both Blinken and Lammy stressed that the authorization for the use of long-range missiles will be discussed by their respective heads of state at the meeting that both will hold tomorrow, Friday, in Washington. “It is (Russian President Vladimir) Putin who has escalated (the situation) this week with the shipment of ballistic missiles from Iran,” Lammy argued.
Source: www.eldiario.es
