(Moscow) Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that Russia should start producing previously banned short- and medium-range missiles, after warning Washington of the risk of “direct confrontation” from US drone missions in the Black Sea.
This week, Russia also blamed the United States for a strike on Sunday in Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014, committed according to it by Kyiv using American ATACMS tactical missiles with a range of 300 km, which left four people dead and more than 150 injured.
Moscow has promised retaliation over what it sees as Washington’s growing involvement.
Vladimir Putin, during a meeting broadcast on television with senior officials, estimated Friday that his country should “start producing” missiles with a range of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.
These were previously banned under a Cold War-era treaty with the United States that has now expired.
The Russian president claimed that the United States had started using such missiles during training exercises in Denmark.
“We need to respond to this and make decisions about what we need to do next in this area,” he continued, saying Russia would decide “where” to deploy these weapons.
Washington withdrew in 2019 from this Treaty on Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF), citing its non-compliance by Moscow. Russia then assured that it would observe a moratorium on the production of such devices if the Americans did not deploy them at a distance that would allow them to reach its territory.
Several Cold War treaties between Washington and Moscow intended to limit the nuclear arms race and ease tensions at the height of their rivalry have ended in recent years.
Moscow considers that the assistance provided to Kyiv in terms of weapons, intelligence collection and identification of targets on Russian territory made the United States and its allies parties to the conflict, which the Kremlin relaunched in February 2022 by a large-scale offensive in Ukraine.
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 “, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
According to Moscow, American drones are used “for reconnaissance and target designation for precision weapons supplied to the Ukrainian armed forces” by the West.
The Kremlin assures that ATACMS missile strikes require specialists, technologies and intelligence collected by the Americans. The Pentagon only said Monday that Ukraine “makes its own decisions.”
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.
Russian bombings continue daily in Ukrainian localities.
Four civilians were killed and three others, including “an eight-year-old girl”, injured Friday morning during a strike on the small city of New York, in the east of the country, according to the regional prosecutor’s office.
Eight people were also injured in a strike in Kharkiv, the country’s second city, Governor Oleg Synegoubov announced.
Another attack left one dead and six injured, including a seven-month-old baby, in Dnipro (Central-East), according to regional governor Serguiï Lyssak. Four floors of a residential building were destroyed, he said.
Such strikes prove the need to provide “an air shield” to Ukraine, insisted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has been making repeated calls to his allies to this effect.
High-intensity fighting continues on the front, particularly in the east, where Russia claimed Friday the capture of Rozdolivka, a village located north of the devastated town of Bakhmout.
But according to Kyiv, the Ukrainian forces are in a better position thanks to the arrival of Western weapons, 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 level, 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 the world’s countries. 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.