Deliveries of US ATACMS long-range ballistic missiles to Ukraine will not change the outcome of the conflict in any way, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said today. He was reacting to Wednesday’s statement by American officials, according to which Ukraine used these American missiles to bomb a military airport in Russia’s annexed Crimea last week.
“The United States is directly involved in this conflict. It will not fundamentally change the outcome of the special military operation, we will achieve our goal, but it will cause more problems for Ukraine itself,” said Peskov, who used the official Kremlin term for Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine, according to the TASS agency.
In recent weeks, the United States has secretly supplied long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine, which has used them twice so far – in addition to the attack on the Dzhankoy military airport on the Crimean peninsula, and on Wednesday night during the strike on Berdyansk in the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporozhye region. US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel and White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan confirmed the delivery at the direction of US President Joe Biden. According to Sullivan, Ukraine has pledged to use them only within its occupied territory, not on the Russian Federation.
At almost 300 kilometers, the new missiles have almost double the range of those the United States has been supplying Ukraine since last October, and Kiev has been keen on them. According to Reuters, the Biden administration has been debating providing them for several months.
The Kremlin has repeatedly argued that Western military support for Ukraine, which Russia outnumbers in terms of troops and weapons, means NATO’s involvement in the conflict. According to Western countries, Russia is supplied with weapons by North Korea, China or Iran.
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