President Vladimir Putin warned the United States in an interview broadcast on Sunday that Russia would strike new targets if the West supplies longer-range missiles to Ukraine for use in high-precision mobile rocket systems.
USA has ruled out sending its own or NATO forces to Ukrainebut Washington and its European allies have supplied kyiv with weapons such as drones, Howitzer heavy artillery, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and Javelin anti-tank missiles.
President Joe Biden said last week that Washington would supply Ukraine high mobility artillery rocket systems M142, or HIMARS, After receiving guarantees from Kyiv that they would not be used to attack Russia.
Putin said the arms shipments were “nothing new” and changed nothing, but warned there would be a response if USA supplies longer-range ammunition for HIMARS systems, which have a maximum range of up to 300 km or more.
If longer-range missiles are supplied, “we will hit targets that we have not yet hit,” Putin said in an interview on state-run Rossiya-1 television.
Putin said that the scope of the systems HIMARS of Lockheed Martin depended on the ammunition supplied and that the range announced by USA it was more or less the same as that of the Soviet-made missile systems that I already had Ukraine.
“This is nothing new. It does not change anything in essence,” Putin said. He added that the weapons simply replace the ones Russia had destroyed.
Putin did not identify the targets Russia would attack, but said the “buzz” over Western arms supplies was designed to drag out the conflict.
The Department of Defense USA said he was delivering to Ukraine four systems HIMARS M142 along with the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System which, he noted, had a range of more than 40 miles, twice the range of the howitzers it supplied.
“Crack Nuts”
The war in Ukraine, the largest ground invasion of Europe since World War II, has shown the limits of the post-Soviet military power of Russiawith significant losses and several changes in strategy in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance.
Speaking of the drones delivered by Western states to Ukraine, Putin he said Russian air defenses were “cracking them like nuts”. Dozens of them, she said, have been destroyed.
Although Russian officials have warned that the decision to USA to supply advanced rocket systems to Ukraine would exacerbate the conflict, Putin he said it would not bring about any fundamental change on the battlefield.
The interview, which according to kremlin It was recorded on June 3 in the Black Sea town of Sochi and showed Putin sitting before a large wall map of Russia, Europe and Central Asia.
When asked about Ukrainian grain exports, he said that the best solution would be to transport it through Belarusbut noted that sanctions on the Russian ally should be lifted.
Since the Russian invasion on February 24, Ukrainian grain shipments from its Black Sea ports have come to a standstill and more than 20 million tons of grain are stuck in silos.
Putin and Russian officials do not use the words war or invasion, saying it is a “special military operation” aimed at preventing the persecution of Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine.
Putin he also presents it as a turning point in Russian history: a Moscow revolt against the United States, which he says has humiliated Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Ukraine says it is fighting for its own survival against an imperial Russian-style land grab that has irretrievably divided the two largest East Slavic peoples and sown death and destruction in Europe’s second-largest country by area.