Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the United States, during an interview broadcast on Sunday, that Russia would bomb new targets if the West provided Ukraine with longer-range missiles for use in high-precision mobile missile systems.
The United States has ruled out sending US or NATO forces to Ukraine, but Washington and its European allies have provided Kyiv with weapons such as drones, heavy howitzer artillery, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and Javelin anti-tank missiles.
US President Joe Biden said last week that Washington would provide Ukraine with the HIMARS missile systems after receiving assurances from Kyiv that they would not be used to target Russia.
Putin said the arms shipments were “not new” and did not change anything, but warned that there would be a response if the United States provided long-range missiles to HIMARS systems with a maximum range of 300 km or more.
In an interview with the state TV station Rossiya-1, Putin said that in the event of the provision of such missiles, “we will bomb those targets that we have not yet begun to strike.”
Putin said the range of Lockheed Martin’s HIMARS systems depended on the missiles they were being supplied with, and that the range the United States had announced was about the same as the Soviet-made missile systems Ukraine already had.
“This is not new,” Putin said. It doesn’t fundamentally change anything.” He added that these weapons only replaced those destroyed by Russia.
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