(NewsSpace.com) – Diplomatic relations between the West and Russia have deteriorated significantly since the country invaded its neighbor back in 2022. Throughout the past two years, Russia has made a series of vague threats against the West, even going so far as to insinuate it would use nuclear weapons before it walked back those statements. Now, it seems the country has another warning.
The United States has been a staunch ally of Ukraine in its war against Russia, supplying it with billions of dollars of military and humanitarian aid. While it has continually sent munitions, they came with a caveat: Ukraine could not use them for offensive purposes to strike Russia’s interior. However, in a policy shift this month, President Joe Biden gave Kyiv permission to use missiles to stave off a new Russian offensive that saw its troops seize parts of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. That meant it could not strike inside Russia, but only for “counter-fire purposes” and only in that region. Germany followed suit, though it refused to send long-range missiles, and France agreed it was the right move.
In a recent meeting with foreign journalists, Russian President Vladimir Putin made it clear that he was not happy with the recent policy change. He warned that his country was in a position to send weapons to the West’s adversaries.
Putin posed the question that if the West could send weapons to others to attack his country, then “why [doesn’t Russia] have the right to supply weapons of the same class to regions of the world where there will be strikes on sensitive facilities of those countries?” He noted that the response could be asymmetric, that is, one side is heavily loaded compared to another. While Putin didn’t name any countries, Russia’s Security Council deputy chairman, Dmitry Medvedev, said any enemy of the US is his country’s friend.
Putin also renewed his nuclear weapon threat, saying the possibility that he would use them “should not be taken lightly,” and that the nuclear doctrine allows for the nation to use them if “the very existence of the state is put under threat.”
The State Department acknowledged the threats but said the warnings are just more of Russia’s posturing and that the US remains committed to supporting Ukraine through the war.
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