The Kremlin has warned it will carry out an ‘appropriate response’ if Ukraine uses Western missiles to strike Russian soil.
UKRAINE SEEKS U.S. GOVERNMENT
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has increasingly urged the West to allow his forces to use long-range weapons, including American ATACMS missiles, against Russian territory to combat the invasion of his nation, now in its 30th month.
WHAT BIDEN SAID
US president Joe Biden said last night that his government was ‘working that out now’ when asked if he would lift restrictions on Kyiv’s use of missiles such as ATACMS.
In response, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov warned that Vladimir Putin‘s forces would exact an ‘appropriate response’ if Ukraine was allowed to use Western missiles, but added that ‘there is no need to expect some kind of response everywhere.’
‘To all these actions, the SMO (special military operation) is the response,’ said Peskov, using the Kremlin’s preferred term for the Ukraine conflict.
‘Each of these decisions, taken by the collective West and then attributed to Ukraine, is an additional confirmation of the justification, necessity and inevitability of the SMO.’
It comes as both British foreign secretary David Lammy and US secretary of state Anthony Blinken visited Kyiv in a rare joint visit that was, unusually, announced in advance – a public signal of British-American support for Ukraine ahead of what’s likely to be a brutal winter of Russian attacks.
