Putin threatens to engage the West in direct combat with Russia if it permits Kiev to utilize long-range missiles

President Vladimir Putin declared on Thursday that if the West let Ukraine to use long-range missiles manufactured in the West to attack Russian territory, then the West and Russia would engage in direct combat. This would, he claimed, change the character and extent of the battle.

For months, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been begging with Kyiv’s allies to allow Ukraine to fire Western missiles, such as the British Storm Shadow and the American ATACMS long-range missiles, deep into Russian territory in order to hinder Moscow’s capacity to conduct attacks.

Putin said that such a move would drag the nations providing Kyiv with long-range missiles directly into the conflict because Kyiv lacked the capabilities to program the missiles’ flight paths or use satellite targeting data. These were some of his most belligerent remarks on the matter to date.

Therefore, it is not a question of whether or not to permit the Ukrainian regime to attack Russia with these weapons. Putin stated on Russian state TV, “It is a matter of determining whether or not NATO members are directly involved in a military conflict.

“If this choice is made, it will include the direct participation of the US, other NATO members, and European nations in the conflict in Ukraine. They will be directly involved in this, which will obviously drastically alter the fundamentals and character of the fight.”

Putin stated that the fresh threats would compel Russia to make “appropriate decisions”.

He did not specify the nature of those actions, but he has previously discussed the possibility of arming adversaries of the West with Russian weaponry so they could attack Western targets overseas. In June, he also mentioned the possibility of placing conventional missiles close to the US and its European allies.

The largest nuclear power in the world, Russia, is currently updating its nuclear doctrine, which outlines the conditions under which Moscow would use nuclear weapons. A powerful foreign policy hawk is pressuring Putin to amend the doctrine to explicitly state that Russia is willing to use nuclear weapons against nations that “support NATO aggression in Ukraine.”

In addition, Russia and China are presently conducting significant naval drills and are thinking about limiting their major commodities exports.

In response to what it claims is an escalation of the conflict by Moscow, which it claims has obtained ballistic missiles from Iran, the West is debating whether or not to permit Kyiv to use its long-range weaponry to target Russia. The charges were described as “ugly propaganda” by Tehran.

With tens of thousands of troops, Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, setting off the greatest conflict between Russia and the West since the early stages of the Cold War.

Putin views the war as a part of an existential struggle against a decaying and decadent West that, in his view, humiliated Russia by intruding into areas that Moscow regards to be its sphere of influence, including Ukraine, following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

The West and Ukraine have promised to defeat Russia on the battlefield and have characterized the invasion as an imperial-style territory grab. More than 18% of Ukraine is under Russian control.