An employee of the Kharkiv Prosecutor’s Office collects fragments of an aerial bomb for further analysis April 30, 2024 in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
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Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Monday warned the United States of the potential “fatal consequences” of allowing kyiv to deploy US-supplied weapons against targets in Russia.
“I would like to warn the American leadership against miscalculations that could have fatal consequences. For some unknown reason, they underestimate the severity of the rebuff they could receive,” Ryabkov said, according to translated comments by Google and distributed by the official Russian news agency Tass.
He noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin had addressed the subject several times, issuing “a very important warning, and it must be taken seriously, with the utmost seriousness.”
Last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the White House had approved a Ukrainian request to deploy US-supplied weapons against targets on Russian territory, on the border near the Ukrainian city of Kharkov. This use was authorized for the limited purpose of defending Kharkiv.
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, is just 30 kilometers from Russia and faces brutal and increasingly intense daily offensives, including numerous airstrikes.
“The hallmark of our commitment, our support to Ukraine over these more than two years has been to adapt and adjust as necessary to respond to what is actually happening on the battlefield, to ensure that Ukraine has what it needs, when it needs it, to “We must do this deliberately and effectively. And that’s exactly what we’re doing in response to what we’ve seen in and around the Kharkiv region,” Blinken said at a news conference.
“Over the past few weeks, Ukraine has come to us and requested permission to use the weapons we provide to defend against this aggression, including against Russian forces assembling on the Russian side of the border and then attack Ukraine And it went directly to the (American) president And, as you heard, he approved the use of our weapons for this purpose.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged the US concession at a news conference in Sweden last week.
“I think that, in any case, this is a step forward towards this goal that we discussed earlier: to give the possibility to defend our people who live in the villages across the border, and that’s it. For today ‘Today, that’s it,’ he said.
Washington’s softening stance led Germany to also allow Ukraine to strike some targets on Russian territory with long-range weapons supplied by Europe’s top economy, the Associated Press reported. Germany specifically authorizes this use only for the purpose of defending Kharkiv.
US and European allies have provided Kiev with military support and arsenal to defend itself throughout the all-out invasion of Moscow, while avoiding outright approval of the deployment of their weapons on Russian territory – which could provoke retaliation from Moscow and an escalation of the conflict.
Western countries have also avoided the formal deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine, with the exception of isolated comments from French President Emmanuel Macron – and recent signals from Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski – that countries should not not exclude this possibility.
It is also widely believed that Russia is using Iranian-made Shahed drones in its hostilities against Ukraine. Tehran says it has not provided weapons for this purpose.
The change in position regarding the deployment of Western weapons on Russian territory has raised the question of whether the F-16 fighter jets imminently expected in Ukraine will also be allowed to strike Russian soil.
“I’m not sure that for today we have (the) possibility of using these planes on the territory of Russia, we’ll see. We started talking about it, and I think that using any weapon, of Western type, “on the territory of Russia, it’s… it’s a matter of time, I think so,” Zelensky said last week, arguing that Russian troops can otherwise continue to capitalize on conducting offensives from border positions “This way they attack and we cannot.”
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