‘Recipe for very serious problems’: Putin says Russia could supply arms to other nations to strike the West

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has warned that Moscow is considering “asymmetric” measures against Ukraine’s use of Western-supplied weapons in Russian territory, including arming the western adversaries. ..Read Full Article

Putin’s remarks came at a meeting with heads of international news agencies on Wednesday (June 5), on the sidelines of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). The remarks follow confirmation by a US senator and a western official that Ukraine has recently used US weapons to strike inside Russia.

“We have no illusions in this regard,” Putin said while repeating his earlier claims that Ukrainian troops might be using the weapons but the US and its allies are providing the intelligence and targeting information to Kyiv.

“Secondly, if someone deems it possible to supply such weapons to the war zone, to strike our territory… why shouldn’t we supply similar weapons to those regions of the world, where they will be used against sensitive sites of these countries?” the Russian president added.

“We can respond asymmetrically. We will give it a thought.”

The Russian president said that if the West continues to escalate, it “will completely destroy international relations and undermine international security”.

“If we see that these countries are being drawn into a war against us, and this is their direct participation in the war against Russia, then we reserve the right to act in a similar way. This is a recipe for very serious problems,” he warned.

Russia claims that a number of NATO military instructors training the Ukrainian forces have been killed in the Russian strikes.

Meanwhile, Washington and its allies claim that providing weapons and equipment to Ukraine does not put them at war with Russia.

Last month, a report from the Institute for the Study of War had said that Ukrainian forces struck a Russian S-300/400 air defence battery in the Belgorod region, with a US-supplied high mobility artillery rocket system, or Himars, on 1 or 2 June.

(With inputs from agencies)

Mukul Sharma is a New Delhi-based multimedia journalist covering geopolitical developments in and beyond the Indian subcontinent. Deeply interested in the affairs