At the height of tensions between the US and Russiawhich directly blamed the Americans for a bombing on Crimea on Sunday, The defense ministers of the two countries spoke on the phone for the first time in over a year to discuss the situation in Ukraine. With the Russian one, Andrei Belousov, who warned the head of the Pentagon Lloyd Austin about the “risk of further escalation due to the supply of weapons to the Ukrainian forces”. This is Moscow’s version, while Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder underlined that the two agreed to “keep the lines of communication open”.
The US Defense Secretary had not spoken to his Moscow counterpart, Serghei Shoigu at the time, since March 2023. The conversation with Belousov, therefore, was the first conversation since this economist was appointed to head the Russian Ministry of Defense last May. According to Russia, “other topics” were also discussed during the conversation, which took place on an American initiative.. No clarification was given in this regard, but underlining the level of tension between the two largest nuclear powers originating from the Ukrainian conflict was the news given by the Russian Ministry of Defense according to which Moscow’s forces in Ukraine have “destroyed” three American Himars rocket launch systems and “foreign specialists who operated them.”
President Vladimir Putin recently said that Russia was aware of the presence of military personnel from NATO countries in Ukraine, who according to him had already suffered “losses”. The Russian leader did not say what their nationality would be, just as the Ministry of Defense does not now specify which countries these “specialists” were from. But in the last year the US has supplied Kiev with many of these systems, which can also be used to launch Atacms missiles, with a range of up to 300 kilometers. And precisely these latter carriers, according to Moscow, were used on Sunday for a bombing on Crimea in which four civilians were killed – including two children – and another 150 people were injured. The Russian authorities claim that the Atacms can only be launched with the active participation of American personnel for the entry of navigation coordinates obtained from satellite intelligence, and for this reason they have also announced a response towards the USA.
And Deputy Foreign Minister Serghei Ryabkov said he did not rule out that this response could be of a military nature. A few weeks ago, President Vladimir Putin had suggested reacting to Ukraine’s use of Western weapons to strike Russian territory – which he considers Crimea, annexed in 2014 – by sending missiles to “regions of the world” from where they could threaten “sensitive objectives” of NATO countries. And after his visit to Pyongyang last week he did not rule out supplying such weapons to North Korea, from where they could target American forces on the peninsula. The management of the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia (Znpp), occupied by the Russians, has meanwhile accused Kiev forces of having destroyed a radiation control station in a bombing of the same facility located in Velikaya Znamenka, about thirty kilometers west of the plant. The director of ZNPP, Yury Chernichuk, assured that his technicians will replace the station with a new one and “radiation control will return to the normal regime foreseen by the project”. Chernichuk stressed that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was informed of the fact, and was also provided with photographic evidence of the damage.
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