Russia threatened Westerners with ‘direct confrontation’ on Friday. This is because of the ‘intensification’ of US military drone flights in the Black Sea, off the coast of Ukraine.
Moscow considers that the assistance provided to kyiv in terms of weapons, intelligence collection and identification of targets on Russian territory has made the United States and its allies parties to the conflict in Ukraine, which the Kremlin has exacerbated in February 2022 by launching its forces to attack its neighbor.
US drone flights in the Black Sea “increase the likelihood of incidents in the airspace with aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces, which increases the risk of a direct confrontation between the Alliance and the Russian Federation,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
“NATO countries would be responsible for this,” he warned, adding that Defense Minister Andrei Belousov had ordered the General Staff “to take measures to respond quickly to provocations.”
Because, according to the Russian ministry, American drones are used ‘for reconnaissance and target designation for precision weapons supplied to the Ukrainian armed forces’ by the West.
After having long refused, for fear of provoking an escalation, Americans and Europeans have begun to authorize in recent weeks, under conditions, strikes with Western precision weapons on Russian territory to destroy sites and systems used to bomb Ukraine.
Tourniquet for all
Russia had already threatened the United States with retaliation on June 24, accusing it of “killing Russian children,” the day after a strike in Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula bordered by the Black Sea and annexed by Moscow in 2014. The attack left four dead, including two children, and more than 150 injured by debris from a missile shot down over a “coastal area,” according to Moscow.
According to the Kremlin, long-range ATACMS missile strikes cannot be carried out by Ukraine alone, as they require specialists, technologies and intelligence collected by the Americans.
In Washington, the Pentagon limited itself to saying on Monday that Ukraine ‘makes its own decisions’.
Already in early June, Russian President Vladimir Putin had threatened to deliver equivalent weapons to enemies of the West to strike their interests in other regions of the world, evoking reprisals.
And while the Russian fleet has numerical superiority in the Black Sea, it has lost many ships over the past two years, targeted by naval drone attacks successfully launched by kyiv.
With these strikes, the Ukrainian army has pushed back Russian warships and established a sea corridor in the area to export its grain. It is now also trying to strike the important military presence in Crimea, the rear base of the Russian war effort.
Faced with the Ukrainian strikes, the authorities installed by Moscow in Sevastopol, headquarters of the Russian Black Sea fleet, on Thursday asked each resident to now carry a tourniquet, a medical instrument used to stop hemorrhages.
Oil depot affected
Ukraine also regularly attacks Russian energy sites with drones in retaliation for bombings that have ravaged Ukrainian infrastructure, forcing kyiv to ration electricity across the country.
During the night from Thursday to Friday, an oil depot in the Tambov region, several hundred kilometers from the border, was attacked by a Ukrainian explosive drone, according to regional governor Maxime Egorov, causing a fire which was then extinct.
The Russian Defense Ministry, for its part, claimed to have ‘intercepted’ 25 Ukrainian drones during the night above Russian territory.
High-intensity fighting continues on a large part of the front, which stretches over approximately 1,000 km. Particularly in the North-East and the East.
For months, the Russian army has had the initiative. On May 10, it launched a new offensive in the North-East, in the Kharkiv region, against a Ukrainian army short of men and ammunition.
In better position
But according to kyiv, the Ukrainian forces are in a better position, now that Western aid, blocked for months, is reaching the troops deployed on the front.
“The ratio of ammunition consumption was 1 to 7 (in favor of the Russian army, editor’s note), today it is 1 to 3,” a source within the Ukrainian general staff told AFP on Friday.
A new mobilization must also replenish the Ukrainian ranks.
/ATS
