USA-Russia are talking again: defense ministers call. Belousov in Austin: “Escalation with weapons in Kiev”
At the height of tensions between the US and Russia, which 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 on the “risk of further escalation due to the supply of weapons to 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, Sergei Shoigu at the time, since March 2023.
The one with Belousov, therefore, it was the first conversation since this economist was appointed to head the Russian Defense Ministry last May. According to Russia, “other topics” were also discussed during the conversation, which took place on the 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 had “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, which he said 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 USA has supplied Kiev with many of these systems, which can also be used to launch Atacms missiles, with a range up to 300 kilometers. And it is precisely these latter carriers, according to Moscow, that were used on Sunday in a bombing of Crimea in which four civilians were killed – including two children – and 150 others were injured. Russian authorities say that Atacms can only be launched with the active participation of American personnel for the input of navigation coordinates obtained from satellite intelligence, and for this reason they have announced a response also towards the United States. And Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said he does not rule out that this response could be of a military nature.
A few weeks ago the president Vladimir Putin had hypothesized to react to Ukraine’s use of Western weapons to strike Russian territory – which it considers Crimea, annexed in 2014 – by sending missiles to “regions of the world” from where they could threaten “sensitive targets” 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 of Zaporizhzhia (Znpp), occupied by the Russians, has meanwhile accused Kiev’s forces of having destroyed in a bombing a radiation control station of the same plant located in Velikaya Znamenka, about thirty kilometers west of the plant. The director of the Znpp, Yury Cherchuk, 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”. Cherchuk underlined that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was informed of the fact, and photographic evidence of the damage was also provided.
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