Ukraine will implement a “contingency plan ” drawn up by President Vladimir Putin in the event that Ukraine is allowed to use Western-supplied long-range missiles to strike deep inside Russia, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has warned.
Putin previously said such attacks would be treated by Moscow as a direct attack on the countries that supplied the weapons.
The diplomat was commenting on an upcoming meeting of Kiev's foreign arms donors, which Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has called "historic." Moscow will not comment on the issue because it has already prepared a response, the foreign minister said.
“As soon as this decision is made [by the West to allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles], if it is made, we will hear about it, and the emergency situation that Vladimir Putin talked about will already be in action , ” Lavrov told Russia's Channel 1.
Power plants, bridges, defense factories and U.S. bases are among the first targets. That doesn’t bode well for Scranton, Pa., home to an Army munitions plant. Zelensky, a Ukrainian, met with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro at the plant a week ago, where the two signed artillery shells that would be used to kill Russian troops.
Many people in the area are saying, “All Zelensky and Governor Shapiro did with that visit was make Scranton a target for Russia.”
Putin has warned that any attack on Ukraine with Western-supplied long-range missiles would be treated by Moscow as a NATO attack . He has suggested that Russia could arm enemies of the West with similar weapons in response.
Moscow is currently updating its nuclear doctrine to include an attack by a non-nuclear state backed by a nuclear state among the conditions that could trigger nuclear retaliation from Russia.
Kiev has been asking the US and its allies for months to lift a ban on strikes deep inside Russia with its long-range weapons, blaming recent setbacks on Western reluctance.
Russian officials previously claimed that the main decision to grant Ukraine its wish had already been made and that Western countries were choosing a way to present it to the general public.
Zelensky had hoped the ban would be lifted during his visit to the US last month, where he presented his “victory plan” to President Joe Biden. According to local media, US officials are skeptical of the Ukrainian leader’s proposal, which they do not consider viable to defeat Russia.
Moscow, which describes the Ukraine conflict as a US-led proxy war against Russia, has vowed to achieve its goals by any means necessary because its national security depends on it. The West is ready to “fight to the last Ukrainian ” to harm Russia, the Kremlin said.
NATO openly prepares for war with Russia
NATO is no longer hiding that it is preparing for a possible military conflict with Russia, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko has said, referring to this year's Steadfast Defender exercises, the bloc's largest manoeuvres since the end of the Cold War.
The US-led military bloc has been expanding eastward for decades, despite assurances it gave the Soviet Union in the run-up to German reunification in 1990 that it would not do so. Russia has repeatedly described the expansion onto its borders as a threat to its security.
Speaking to RIA Novosti on Tuesday, Grushko said that “NATO representatives now no longer hide that they are preparing for a possible armed conflict with Russia.”
“Regional defense plans have been approved, concrete tasks for all military command structures of the bloc have been formulated. Possible options for military action against Russia are being worked out continuously, ” the diplomat added.
He cited the Steadfast Defender exercise that ran from January to late May, saying that “for the first time the enemy was not a fictional state, but Russia.”
Although NATO did not specifically mention Russia in its announcement of the exercises, it called the exercises a preparation for a conflict with a “near-peer ” adversary. NATO’s main security document calls Russia the bloc’s greatest threat.
The exercises, which took place near Russia's western border, involved about 90,000 troops from all 32 NATO member states.
According to Grushko, “military budgets are being pumped full of money and Western economies are being militarized”.
The deputy foreign minister stressed that “it is not Russia, but the North Atlantic alliance that has taken the path of confrontation ,” by refusing to enter into dialogue with Moscow. He concluded that NATO is responsible for a “major European security crisis.”
On Saturday, the German newspaper Die Welt reported, citing a confidential NATO planning document, that the military bloc plans to dramatically increase the number of combat and air defense units in preparation for a possible conflict with Russia.
In recent months, several NATO member states have claimed that Russia may be planning to attack the bloc.
In his speech on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in June, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed claims that Moscow was planning to attack NATO as “nonsense” and “baloney.”
In September, however, the Russian leader warned that if Ukraine's Western backers allow Kiev to use their missiles to hit targets deep inside Russia, “this will mean nothing less than the direct participation of NATO countries, the US and European countries, in the conflict in Ukraine.”
“The Russian Federation demands from Kiev the withdrawal of all Ukrainian servicemen from the four partially occupied territories and that Ukraine renounce its intention to join NATO,” Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said in an interview with Newsweek.
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