afp_tickers
This content was published in
June 24, 2024 – 16:21
Russia on Monday threatened the United States with retaliation and accused it of “killing Russian children,” the day after a Ukrainian bombing of Crimea carried out, according to Moscow, with American missiles.
Russia believes that the United States became part of the conflict in Ukraine when it authorized Kiev to use long-range missiles against Russian regions and against Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014 and which serves as a rear base for the Russian army. to attack his neighbor.
“It is clear that the participation of the United States in the fighting, its direct participation, which leads to the death of Russian citizens, has to have consequences,” declared the spokesman for the Russian presidency, Dmitri Peskov.
The spokesperson asked journalists in Europe and the United States to ask “why their governments kill Russian children.”
According to Moscow, Ukraine cannot carry out long-range ATACMS missile attacks on its own, such as the one on Sunday in Crimea, as they require specialists, technologies and data from US intelligence.
Washington and European countries began to authorize kyiv to use Western weapons to attack military targets in Russian territory that are used to bomb Ukraine.
Moscow considers Crimea its territory since its annexation in 2014, denounced by the vast majority of the international community and not recognized by some of Russia’s allies, such as China.
– Ambassador summoned –
Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened earlier this month to deliver equivalent weapons to enemies of Western powers to hit their interests in other regions of the world.
According to the Russian military, Ukrainian forces fired five ATACMS missiles on Sunday and four of them were shot down near Sevastopol, a port city that houses the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
At least four people were killed, including two children, and more than 150 were injured, according to local authorities established by Russia.
The Russian Foreign Ministry announced on Monday that it had summoned Lynne Tracy, the US ambassador in Moscow, to inform her of “retaliatory measures,” considering that the United States “is waging a hybrid war against Russia” and “has become part of the conflict” in Ukraine.
“The ambassador was informed that such actions by Washington (…) authorizing attacks within Russian territory would not go unpunished,” he added.
Russia, which began its offensive in Ukraine in February 2022, promised a response to this attack the day before.
For Ukraine, military objectives in Crimea and inside Russia are legitimate, especially since Ukrainian forces are under pressure on the front due to kyiv’s shortage of men and weapons.
– Prohibited irritating gases –
Ukraine suffers daily Russian bombings that hit its energy infrastructure, among others, forcing power outages to be established throughout the country to address electricity shortages.
A Russian missile also hit a warehouse in Odessa, a strategic Black Sea port in southern Ukraine, on Monday morning, leaving three people injured.
And at least four people were killed and 34 wounded in a Russian bombing in the city of Pokrovsk, in the eastern Donetsk region, local authorities said.
One man was killed in another Russian attack in Stepanivka in the southern region of Kherson, and in the Kharkiv region in the northeast, two people died after “a car hit an anti-tank mine,” according to Ukrainian authorities.
On the other hand, the Ukrainian General Staff accused Russia of intensifying its attacks with tear gas, normally used by security forces in riots and prohibited as a “means of war” by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
bur/hgs/pc
