Putin issues warning to Ukraine’s Western allies
RUSSIA has taken aim at Western military supplies for Ukraine, after launching missile strikes on Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital on Sunday, as Vladimir Putin warned that any Western deliveries of longer-range rocket systems would prompt Moscow to hit “objects that we haven’t yet struck”.
The Russian president’s threat of military escalation did not specify what the new targets might be. It came days after the United States announced plans to deliver $700 million (£560 million) of security assistance for Ukraine that includes four precision-guided, mediumrange rocket systems, as well as helicopters, Javelin anti-tank systems, radars, tactical vehicles and more.
The UK has also announced it will send its first long-range missiles to Ukraine. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said Britain will send an unspecified number of M270 launchers, which can fire precisionguided rockets up to 50 miles – a longer range than any missile technology currently in use in the war.
In a television interview, Mr Putin lashed out at Western deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, saying they aim to prolong the war. “All this fuss around additional deliveries of weapons, in my opinion, has only one goal: to drag out the armed conflict as much as possible,” he said.
Mr Putin insisted such supplies were unlikely to change the military situation for Ukraine’s government, which he said was merely making up for losses of similar rockets.
If Kyiv gets longer-range rockets, the Russian president added, Moscow will “draw appropriate conclusions and use our means of destruction, which we have plenty of, in order to strike at those objects that we haven’t yet struck”.
The missiles that struck Kyiv destroyed T-72 tanks supplied by eastern European countries and other armoured vehicles, the Russian Defence Ministry claimed.
In response, Ukraine’s railway authority led reporters on a guided tour of a rail car repair plant in eastern Kyiv that it said was hit by four missiles. The authority said no military equipment had been stored there, and Associated Press reporters saw no remnants of any in the facility’s destroyed building.
“There were no tanks, and you can just be witness to this,” said Serhiy Leshchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian president’s office. However, a government adviser said on national television that military infrastructure was also targeted. A building burning in an area near the destroyed rail car plant was spotted, and two residents of the district said the warehouse-type structure that billowed smoke was part of a tankrepair facility. Police blocking access to the site told reporters that military authorities had banned the taking of images there.
The US has stopped short of offering Ukraine longer-range weapons that could fire deep into Russia, but the four medium-range High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems in the security package include launchers on wheels that allow troops to strike a target and then quickly move away – which could be useful against Russian artillery on the battlefield.
Before Sunday’s early morning attack, Kyiv had not faced any such Russian assaults since the April 28 visit of United Nations SecretaryGeneral Antonio Guterres. This weekend’s strike showed that Russia still has the capability and willingness to hit at Ukraine’s heart.