The Kremlin has threatened to attack British military targets in retaliation for UK support for Ukraine, as Vladimir Putin’s invasion reaches its 63rd day.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova suggested that Moscow could target the territory of NATO countries that have been supplying weapons to kyiv, to defend against Vladimir Putin’s forces.
Britain has been an outspoken ally of Ukraine and has supplied weapons, including anti-tank weapons and Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles.
On Tuesday, a defense minister said the UK supports Ukraine’s right to attack Russian territory using Western-supplied weapons, a line the Kremlin called a “direct provocation” that would lead to a “proportional response.”
Zakharova said: “Do we understand correctly that in order to disrupt the logistics of military supplies, Russia can attack military targets on the territory of NATO countries that supply weapons to the kyiv regime?
“After all, this leads directly to deaths and bloodshed on Ukrainian territory. As I understand it, Britain is one of those countries.”
The Kremlin Defense Ministry added: “We would like to underline that London’s direct provocation of the kyiv regime for such actions, if such actions are carried out, will immediately lead to our proportional response.
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“As we have warned, the Russian armed forces are ready 24 hours a day to launch retaliatory strikes with high-precision long-range weapons on the decision-making centers in kyiv.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Vladimir Putin stated that “all goals will definitely be realized” in the war with Ukraine.
He told the Council of Lawmakers in St. Petersburg that the “special military operation”, the term used by the Kremlin to describe the war with Ukraine, would “guarantee the safety” of people in Donbas and Crimea.
In a chilling reiteration of what Zakharova had said earlier, the Russian president warned that any country that tries to interfere in the conflict will face “swift” retaliation.
He also said that attempts by the West to “strangle us economically have failed.”
Russia claimed on Wednesday to have attacked an arms depot that housed weapons from the United States and European countries.
The Kremlin said the missiles destroyed hangars in the Zaporizhzhia region that housed “a large batch of foreign weapons and ammunition supplied to Ukrainian troops by the United States and European countries.”
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His warning comes after UK Defense Minister James Heappey said it was “completely legitimate” for kyiv to target Russian supply chains that contribute to “death and carnage on Ukrainian soil”.
He added that the weapons the West, including the UK, is giving Ukraine “have the range to be used on the border” with Russia.
“The fact is that Ukraine was a sovereign country that lived peacefully within the borders of its owner and then another country decided to violate those borders and bring 130,000 soldiers into their country,” he told Times Radio on Tuesday.
“That started a war between Ukraine and Russia, and in the war Ukraine needs to attack its opponents in depth to attack their logistics lines, their fuel supplies, their ammunition depots, and that’s part of it.”
He added that “it’s not necessarily a problem” if British-donated weapons are used to attack sites on Russian soil after agreeing that weapons now being supplied to Ukraine by allies have the range to be used across borders.
“There are many countries around the world that operate equipment that they have imported from other countries, when that equipment is used, we tend not to blame (the country) that made it, we blame the country that fired it,” he said. saying.
The invasion has been deadly, with Ukrainian authorities saying Wednesday that 217 children have been killed so far.
Western intelligence suggested that Putin expected to be in control of the country within days, but more than two months later his troops were forced to leave the north and reportedly suffered heavy losses.
Russia has not given an exact figure for how many soldiers have been killed since the start of the conflict.
Ukrainian authorities have estimated that more than 22,000 Russian soldiers have been killed so far.
Reference-news.yahoo.com