The authorization given to Kyiv by Joe Biden to use long-range American missiles on Russian territory is likely to “pour fuel on the fire” in the conflict in Ukraine, the Kremlin spokesperson said on Monday Dmitry Peskov.
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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, Vladimir Putin warned that such a Western green light “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.
According to Dmitri Peskov, quoting Mr. Putin, 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,” he 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,” Dmitri Peskov said on Monday.
The outgoing US administration has been kyiv’s main supporter, enabling it to resist Russian troops since Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale assault on Ukraine in February 2022.
The sustainability of this support from Washington has been called into question by the election to the presidency of Donald Trump, whose campaign declarations have made Ukraine and its supporters fear that he is seeking to force Kyiv to stop the fighting in price of concessions unacceptable for her.
Moscow, whose troops have been advancing for several months on multiple segments of the front, has warned that any discussion of stopping the fighting could only be based on “new territorial realities”.
