(Moscow) Russia threatened Westerners on Friday with “direct confrontation” because of the “intensification” of American military drone flights in the Black Sea, off the coast of Ukraine, a few days after first threats targeting Washington at following a strike in annexed Crimea.
Moscow considers that the assistance provided to Kyiv in terms of weapons, intelligence collection and identification of targets on Russian territory has made the United States and its allies parties to the conflict in Ukraine, which the Kremlin has exacerbated in February 2022 by launching its forces to attack its neighbor.
US drone flights in the Black Sea “increase the likelihood of incidents in the airspace with aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces, which increases the risk of a direct confrontation between the [Atlantic] Alliance and the Russian Federation.” , denounced the Russian Ministry of Defense in a press release.
“NATO countries would be responsible for this,” he warned, adding that Defense Minister Andrei Belousov had ordered the General Staff “to take measures to quickly respond to provocations “.
After refusing for a long time, for fear of provoking an escalation, in recent weeks the Americans and Europeans have begun to authorize, under conditions, strikes with Western precision weapons on Russian territory to destroy sites and systems used to bomb Ukraine.
Russia had already threatened the United States with reprisals on June 24, accusing them of “killing Russian children,” the day after a strike in Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula bordered by the Black Sea and annexed by Moscow in 2014.
The attack left four dead, including two children, and more than 150 injured by debris from a missile shot down over a “coastal area”, according to Moscow.
The Kremlin insists that the ATACMS long-range missile strikes require American specialists, technologies and intelligence. The Pentagon said Monday that Ukraine “makes its own decisions.”
Already at the beginning of June, Russian President Vladimir Putin had threatened to deliver equivalent weapons to Western enemies to attack their interests in other regions of the world.
If the Russian fleet has numerical superiority in the Black Sea, it has lost numerous ships for more than two years, targeted by naval drone attacks launched by Kyiv.
Thanks to these strikes, the Ukrainian army repelled Russian warships and established a maritime corridor to export its grain. It is also trying to weaken the important military presence in Crimea, the rear base of the Russian war effort.
Faced with the Ukrainian attacks, the authorities installed by Moscow in Sevastopol, headquarters of the Russian Black Sea fleet, asked each resident on Thursday to carry a tourniquet, a medical instrument used to stop hemorrhages.
High-intensity fighting continues on the front, particularly in the east, where Russia claimed Friday the capture of a village, Rozdolivka, located north of Bakhmout.
The Russian army, on the initiative for months, also launched a new offensive in the Kharkiv region (North-East) at the beginning of May.
But according to Kyiv, the Ukrainian forces are in a better position thanks to the arrival of Western munitions, after months of blockage.
“The ammunition consumption ratio was 1 to 7 [in favor of the Russian army], today it is 1 to 3,” a source within the Russian army told AFP on Friday. Ukrainian General Staff.
On the diplomatic front, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that he was working on a new plan to end the conflict, with the aim of it being “supported by the majority” of countries in the world. But he also vowed to continue strengthening his country’s military capabilities to impose a “just peace” on Russia.
Vladimir Putin put forward his own solution: that Ukraine cede five eastern and southern regions and give up joining NATO. De facto a request for capitulation, rejected in Kyiv as in the West.
Russian bombings continue daily in Ukrainian localities.
Four civilians were killed Friday in a Russian bombing of the small town of New York in eastern Ukraine, and two others died in strikes in the northeast and south, authorities said .
