MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Tuesday that people should re-listen to a warning issued by President Vladimir Putin who said the West would be directly fighting with Russia if it allowed Ukraine to strike Russian territory with Western-made long-range missiles.
It made the comments when asked on a conference call if a decision to let Kyiv go ahead with such strikes might prompt Moscow to change its stance on nuclear testing.
Russia will not test a nuclear weapon as long as the United States refrains from testing, Putin’s point man for arms control said on Monday after speculation that the Kremlin might abandon its post-Soviet nuclear test moratorium.
“Please re-listen and re-read the statements that the president has made on this issue – I mean on the topic of possible permission for the use of Western weapons deep into the territory of Russia,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, when asked if the position set out by Ryabkov could change.
“The statement that the president made in St. Petersburg. The position of the Russian Federation is very clearly stated there.”
Speaking in St. Petersburg on Sept. 12, Putin said:
“If this decision (on missiles) is taken, it will mean nothing less than the direct involvement of NATO countries, the United States and European countries in the war in Ukraine. This will be their direct participation, and this, of course, will significantly change the very essence, the very nature of the conflict.”
Russia would be forced to take what Putin called “appropriate decisions” based on the new threats.
He did not spell out what those measures could be, but he has spoken in the past of the option of arming the West’s enemies with Russian weapons to strike Western targets abroad and in June spoke of deploying conventional missiles within striking distance of the United States and its European allies.
Russia, the world’s largest nuclear power, is also in the process of revising its nuclear doctrine – the circumstances in which Moscow would use nuclear weapons.
In St Petersburg in June, Putin said the West was wrong to assume Russia would never use nuclear weapons, and said the Kremlin’s nuclear doctrine should not be taken lightly.
“For some reason, the West believes that Russia will never use it,” Putin said when asked by Reuters in June about the risk of nuclear escalation over Ukraine.
(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
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