Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskovhas minimized the effectiveness of the delivery that the United States has made to Ukraine of long-range ballistic missiles ATACMS and has assured that Russia will continue to lead the war.
Peskov has pointed out that the United States not only “will not be able to change anything” from the point of view of the outcome of the war, but also “it will prolong the suffering of Ukrainians.”
“The result is predetermined and the current dynamics on the fronts demonstrate it. We will win“, concluded the spokesman for the Russian president, Vladimir Putinduring an interview collected by the country’s main agencies.
“With these weapons, Ukraine will end up suffering more, there will be more victims in Ukraine, there will be more destruction in Ukraine“, said Peskov, who has endorsed President Putin’s maxim: “if they increase the potential of their weapons, we will expand our buffer zone to protect our territory, our citizens.”
In turn, Peskov has indicated that the Administration of Joe Biden could have violated US laws by supplying these long-range missiles that, according to the media, have been secretly arriving in Ukraine.
“This is further confirmation of the direct involvement of the United States in the conflict in Ukraine,” said a Kremlin spokesman.
But for his part, the head of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg stated this Thursday that “It is not too late for Ukraine to win” war against Russia, on condition that the Western powers fulfill their promises to deliver more weapons.
“In recent months, NATO allies have not provided the promised support” to the former Soviet republic, which has resisted a Russian invasion for more than two years, Stoltenberg admitted in a speech in Berlin.
Ukraine has started using for the first time long-range ballistic missiles secretly provided by the United Statesbombing a Russian military airfield in Crimea last week and Russian forces in another occupied area overnight.
The new missiles, long requested by Ukrainian leaders, They give almost double the attack distance -up to 300 kilometers- than it had with the medium-range version of the weapon that it received from the United States last October. One of the officials said the US is providing more of these missiles in a new military aid package signed by President Joe Biden on Wednesday.
Biden approved the delivery of Army Tactical Long Range Missile System, known as ATACMS, in early March, and the US included a “significant” number of them in a $300 million aid package announced then, one of the officials said.
Ukraine has been forced to ration its weapons and faces increasing Russian attacks. The president’s government Volodymyr Zelensky had been begging for the long-range system because the missiles provide a critical capability to strike Russian targets that are further away, allowing Ukrainian forces to stay safely out of range.
Information about the delivery has been kept so secret that in recent days lawmakers and others have demanded that the United States send the weapons, unaware that They were already in Ukraine.
For months, the United States resisted sending Ukraine the long-range missiles for fear that kyiv could use them to attack inside Russia, angering Moscow and escalating the conflict. That was one of the main reasons the administration shipped the medium-range version in October, with a range of about 160 kilometers (about 100 miles).
A senior U.S. military official said Wednesday that the White House and military planners carefully analyzed the risks of supplying long-range fire to Ukraine and determined the time was right to do so now.
(With information from EP and AP)
