The authorization given to kyiv by Joe Biden on Sunday to use long-range American missiles on Russian territory is likely to “pour fuel on the fire” in the conflict in Ukraine, declared this Monday Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. If it were to be officially confirmed by Washington, this authorization would lead to “a fundamentally new situation in terms of the involvement of the United States in this conflict”, the spokesperson further warned.
In September, during a cultural forum in Saint Petersburg, Vladimir Putin warned that breaking this strategic barrier “would mean nothing less than direct involvement of NATO countries in the war in Ukraine”.
Washington's decision was announced by the American media and confirmed to AFP by an American official, after a new weekend of massive and deadly Russian strikes on Ukraine and just a few weeks before the transfer of power between the outgoing President Joe Biden and Donald Trump. “The missiles will speak for themselves,” reacted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday, referring to the American green light mentioned by the media, without being able to confirm it.
According to Dmitri Peskov, quoting the Russian president, strikes on Russian territory would “not be carried out by Ukraine, but by the countries which give authorization”. “The coordinates of the targets are not provided by the Ukrainian military, but by specialists from these Western countries. This radically changes the nature of their involvement,” Putin’s voice repeated. “It is obvious that the outgoing administration in Washington intends to take measures to continue to add fuel to the fire and provoke a further rise in tensions,” he criticized.
VideoRussian “massive attack” hits several Ukrainian cities
The outgoing US administration has been kyiv's main supporter, enabling it to resist Russian troops since Vladimir Putin launched his large-scale assault on Ukraine in February 2022. The sustainability of this support from Washington has been highlighted. doubt by the election to the presidency of Donald Trump whose campaign declarations make Ukraine fear that he is seeking to force kyiv to stop the fighting at the cost of territorial concessions unacceptable to it.
If on Saturday Volodymyr Zelensky for the first time really opened the door to negotiations with Moscow, whose troops have been advancing for several months on multiple segments of the front, the Ukrainian president affirmed on Saturday that “in the current conditions, not reinforced by certain important elements, I think that Ukraine is losing out on these negotiations.” According to him, this would not lead to “a just end” to the war, triggered by the Russian invasion of February 2022.
Asked by journalists about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who could propose at the G20 summit to freeze hostilities in Ukraine, Peskov replied that “the option is a priori unacceptable for the Russian side”.
