Thursday, September 12, 2024, 2:06 PM
Following the trip to kyiv on Wednesday by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Office chief David Lammy, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “the US authorities have already decided to lift restrictions on the use of ATACMS missiles to attack Russian territory. Most likely, this decision has already been made.” According to him, such a measure “can be assumed with a high degree of certainty, since a media campaign is currently underway to formalize a decision that already seems to have been made.”
In this regard, the head of the press department of the Russian President warned on Thursday that “there will be an appropriate response if the United States allows Ukraine to attack Russian territory with long-range weapons.” In fact, he added, “the Special Military Operation – in Ukraine – is already one of the responses to all these actions of the West and confirms once again that it is justified.” “The participation of the United States and the European countries in the conflict is direct,” said Peskov.
For his part, the speaker of the State Duma (the lower house of the Russian parliament), Vyacheslav Volodin, has threatened to use “destructive weapons” if Ukraine attacks his country with Western missiles. “Having asked the United States, Germany, France and the United Kingdom to supply long-range weapons, missiles and other equipment, discussing with them the issue of attacking Russian territory, Zelensky turns these countries into direct participants in the conflict. All this will lead to Russia being forced to respond with more powerful and destructive weapons,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.
Psychological warfare
According to Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, “the US statements about the possibility of lifting restrictions on kyiv for attacks in deep areas of the Russian Federation are an attempt to psychologically influence Moscow.” In his opinion, the adoption of such measures “will not change Russia’s course in relation to the operation in Ukraine, but will increase risks for the United States itself and its allies.” Sergei Karaganov, a Russian political scientist close to the Kremlin, has directly called for the use of nuclear weapons against NATO countries that are helping Ukraine, he said in an interview with the Russian newspaper Kommersan’t.
US President Joe Biden has said Washington could allow Ukraine to fire long-range US missiles at targets far behind the Russian front line. Biden said on Tuesday that “we are working on it right now.” On Wednesday in Kiev, Blinken and Lammy promised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that their respective countries will quickly address the issue of Kiev’s use of long-range Western rockets in their military actions against Russia and a response will be forthcoming.
“We are working urgently to continue to ensure that Ukraine has what it needs to defend itself effectively,” Blinken said in kyiv during the press conference, clarifying that the matter will be discussed this Friday during the meeting that Biden will hold with the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer. The American Secretary of State assured that “we have adjusted and adapted to the evolution of the needs, to the evolution of the battlefield, and I have no doubt that we will continue to do so as the situation evolves.” “Our support will not weaken, our unity will not break,” insisted Blinken, who in the meeting that he also held with his Ukrainian counterpart, the newly appointed Andrii Sibiga, declared that his trip to kyiv in the company of Lammy “is our commitment to Ukraine’s victory.”
Zelensky said that “the plan for victory (…) depends primarily on the support of the United States and other allied countries.” On August 27, the Ukrainian president announced that he had a “victory plan” that he will present to Biden and the candidates for the November elections, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. The plan contains four areas, one of which is “the operation in the Kursk region,” which the Ukrainian army launched on August 6.
Force negotiation
“One of the areas (of this strategy) concerns the Kursk region,” the Ukrainian president said. “The second direction, in his words, is the strategic place that Ukraine should have in the world’s security infrastructure. The third is a powerful package of measures to force Russia to diplomatically end the war. The fourth is economic, I will not discuss this in detail now.” The second seems to refer to the need for Ukraine to be admitted to NATO, and the third suggests that long-range weapons are the means, according to Zelensky, of forcing Russia to stop the war and sit down for negotiations.
The British newspaper The Guardian, which is ideologically close to Starmer’s government, reports, citing anonymous government sources, that the decision to allow Ukraine to launch attacks with Western weapons against targets inside recognised Russian territory has already been taken, but there are no plans to announce it publicly.
According to the newspaper, the sources mentioned the Storm Shadow cruise missiles, which are of British and French production, although they also contain American components. According to the Guardian, the meeting between Biden and Starmer on Friday will focus primarily on this aspect and on the war in Ukraine in general. However, the British newspaper believes that there are no plans to announce the decision to allow Ukraine to use the Storm Shadows against targets inside Russia. No press conference is planned there, the newspaper writes.
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