President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that the war in Ukraine was escalating into a global conflict after the United States and Britain allowed Ukrainians to use weapons they made to strike Russia and warned the West that Moscow can counterattack.
Russia, Putin said, responded to US and UK missile use by launching a new type of medium-range hypersonic ballistic missile against a Ukrainian military facility.
More attacks could occur, Putin warned, adding that civilians will be warned in advance of further attacks using these weapons.
After approval from US President Joe Biden’s administration, Ukraine hit Russia with six US-made ATACMS missiles on November 19 and with British Storm Shadow and American HIMARS missiles on November 21, Putin said.
“Since that time, as we have repeatedly emphasized, the regional conflict in Ukraine, previously provoked by the West, has acquired elements of a global character,” Putin said in an address to the nation broadcast on state television after 8 p.m. of Moscow.
The United States, Putin said, is pushing the world towards a global conflict.
“And in case of escalation of aggressive actions, we will respond decisively and equivalently,” he added.
Putin said the Ukrainian ATACMS missile attack caused no significant damage. The Storm Shadow attack in the Kursk region on November 21, however, targeted a command point and resulted in deaths and injuries, he said.
“The use of such weapons by the enemy is not capable of changing the course of military operations in the area of special military operations,” Putin said.
“We believe that we have the right to use our weapons against the military installations of countries that allow the use of their weapons against our installations,” Putin said.
“If anyone still doubts this, they are wrong: there will always be an answer.”
Russia controls 18% of Ukraine, including all of Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014, 80% of Donbas – the Donetsk and Luhansk regions – and more than 70% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, as well as less than 3% of the Kharkiv region and a piece of the Mykolaiv region.
Ukraine and the West say the 2022 invasion was an imperial-style attempt to seize sovereign Ukrainian territory and fear Russia has the ability to attack a NATO member if Putin wins in Ukraine.
“I believe that the United States made a mistake by unilaterally destroying the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Short-Range Missiles in 2019 under a invented pretext,” Putin said, referring to the Treaty on Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF, in English).
The United States formally withdrew from the historic 1987 INF Treaty with Russia in 2019, arguing that Moscow was violating the agreement, a charge rejected by the Kremlin.
Source: Terra
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