President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the Ukraine war was escalating towards a global conflict after the United States and Britain allowed Ukraine to hit Russia with their weapons, and warned the West that Moscow could strike back.
Russia, Putin said, had responded to the use of U.S. and British missiles by firing a new kind of hypersonic medium-range ballistic missile at a Ukrainian military facility. More could follow, Putin warned. He said civilians would be warned ahead of further strikes with such weapons.
After approval from the administration of President Joe Biden, Ukraine struck Russia with six U.S.-made ATACMS on Nov. 19 and with British Storm Shadow missiles and U.S.-made HIMARS on Nov. 21, Putin said.
“From that moment, as we have repeatedly underscored, a regional conflict in Ukraine previously provoked by the West has acquired elements of a global character,” Putin said in an address to the nation carried by state television after 8 pm Moscow time (1700 GMT).
The United States, Putin said, was pushing the world towards a global conflict.
“And in case of escalation of aggressive actions, we will also respond decisively and in a mirror manner,” he said.
Putin said the Ukrainian missile attack with ATACMS had failed to inflict any serious damage. But the Storm Shadow attack on Kursk region on Nov. 21 had been directed at a command point and led to deaths and injuries, Putin said.
“The use by the enemy of such weapons is not able to change the course of the military actions in the zone of the special military operation,” Putin said.
“We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities,” Putin said. “If anyone else doubts this, then they are wrong – there will always be a response.”
Russia controls 18% of Ukraine including all of Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014, 80% of the Donbas – the Donetsk and Luhansk regions – and more than 70% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, as well just under 3% of the Kharkiv region and a sliver of Mykolaiv region.
MOSCOW (Reuters)
