BarcelonaRussian President Vladimir Putin has said he could deploy conventional missiles within striking distance of the United States and its European allies. It is his response to the permission that both Washington and other European capitals gave last week to Ukraine to attack Russian territory with weapons that they have supplied.
In his first face-to-face meeting with international journalists since the war in Ukraine began, Putin said the West was wrong to assume that Russia would never use nuclear weapons and said the Kremlin’s nuclear doctrine should not be taken lightly, according to Reuters. . Asked about NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s calls to allow Ukraine to use Western weapons on military targets on Russian territory, Putin warned that this was a serious escalation drawing the West into war with Russia.
Russia’s response, he has said, would be to shoot down Western missiles, specifically mentioning American ATACMS and British and French missile systems. However, the US has not included ATACMS – which are long-range and have a range of about 300 kilometers – in its permit for use in Russian territory.
Putin has explained, however, that Moscow is also considering deploying similar high-tech, long-range missiles close enough to hit states that have given Ukraine permission to hit Russian territory with these missiles. “If we see that these countries are drawn into a war against the Russian Federation, then we reserve the right to act equally. In general, this is a path to very serious problems,” Putin said.
The Kremlin chief has not given details about which countries he is considering delivering missiles to. The Russian president spoke to international journalists for more than three hours at the newly built 81-story Gazprom tower, two days before the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, which takes place on Friday. “No one from the United States is interested in Ukraine, they are interested in the greatness of the United States, which does not fight for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, but for its own greatness,” he said.
Putin has also said that Russia does not care who the next president of the United States is, but has joined Donald Trump’s speech to affirm that the American judicial system is being used to wage a political battle against the Republican candidate. “They are burning from within, their state, their political system… It is obvious throughout the world that the prosecution of Trump, for events that occurred years ago, without any direct evidence, is simply using the judicial system in an internal political struggle” Putin said.
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