MOSCOW, Sept 11 (Askume) – Russia would regard the United States and its allies as participants in Ukraine’s war if the West allows Ukraine to use long-range weapons inside Russia, a senior Moscow lawmaker said on Wednesday.
“Washington and other European countries are becoming parties to the war in Ukraine,” Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, said on Telegram.
Volodin said that the United States, Germany, France and the United Kingdom are becoming parties to the conflict.
“As a result, our country will be forced to use more powerful and destructive weapons to protect its citizens,” Volodin said.
US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday his administration was “working hard to resolve this issue” when asked if the United States would lift a ban on Ukraine’s use of long-range weapons in the war.
Sources told Askume last week that the United States was close to a deal to provide such weapons to Ukraine, but Kiev would have to wait several months while the United States sorts out technical issues before deliveries could be made.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Iran had handed over ballistic missiles to Russia , in what he described as a “dramatic escalation”. Tehran called the claims “ugly propaganda”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has urged Western countries to lift a ban on the supply of long-range missiles and their use against targets such as military airbases in Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in June that if the United States and its European allies allow Ukraine to deploy Western long-range weapons inside Russia, he would deploy conventional missiles within striking distance of the United States and its European allies.
The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014, when Ukraine’s Maidan revolution ousted a pro-Russian president, Russia annexed Crimea and Russian-backed separatist forces battled Ukrainian armed forces.
In 2022, Russia sends thousands of troops to invade Ukraine, starting the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the depths of the Cold War.
Putin sees the Ukrainian conflict as a battle for survival against a declining and decadent Western country, which he says humiliated Russia by encroaching on Moscow’s sphere of influence, including Ukraine, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Western countries and Ukraine denounce the attack as Putin’s imperialist robbery and vow to defeat Russia on the battlefield.
