Putin on destroyer incident: West will lose war
He also talks on vaccinations in his annual TV show
MOSCOW >> Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that an incident involving a British destroyer in the Black Sea couldn’t have triggered a global conflict even if Russia had sunk the warship because the West knows it can’t win such a war.
The tough statement appeared to indicate his resolve to raise the stakes should a similar incident happen again.
Speaking in a marathon
Russian President Vladimir Putin appears at his annual live call-in show in Moscow on Wednesday.
call-in show, Putin also revealed that he received the domestically produced Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine and urged Russians to get vaccinated as the country
battles a devastating surge of cases and deaths amid widespread hesitancy to get the shot.
Putin was asked about the June 23 incident in the
Black Sea, in which Russia said one of its warships fired warning shots and a warplane dropped bombs in the path of Britain’s HMS Defender to force it from an area near Crimea that Moscow claims as its territorial waters. He said a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft had joined what he described as a “provocation” to test Russia’s response.
Britain, which like most other nations didn’t recognize Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, insisted the Defender wasn’t fired upon and said it was sailing in Ukrainian waters. “HMS Defender was conducting innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters in accordance with international law,” Britain’s Defense Ministry said
Wednesday.
Asked if the events could have triggered a global war, Putin responded that the West wouldn’t risk a fullscale conflict.
“Even if we had sunk that ship, it would be hard to imagine that it would put the world on the brink of World War III because those who do it know that they can’t emerge as winners in that war, and it’s very important,” Putin said. The statement followed Russian officials’ warning that if a Western warship enters the waters again, the military could fire on it.
Putin charged that the U.S. reconnaissance aircraft that took off from the Greek island of Crete was operating in concert with the British ship on an apparent mission to monitor the Russian military’s response to the British destroyer.
“It was clearly a provocation, a complex one involving not only the British but also the Americans,” he said, adding that Moscow was aware of the U.S. intentions and responded accordingly to avoid revealing sensitive data.
Asked about Putin’s claim, Navy Capt. Wendy Snyder, the chief of public affairs for the U.S. European Command, said that “yes, we did have aircraft in operations,” but reaffirmed the Pentagon’s earlier dismissal of the Russian description of the incident as false. “We are operating in and watching everything in the Black Sea,” Snyder said.