Laugh till you cry wrote on Aug 7
th, 2024 at 12:20pm:
The big question is whether Russia would participate in a regional ME war.
On this occasion, I remembered the following response from the Russian leadership:
"
Meeting with heads of international news agenciesJune 5, 2024 - 23:15 - St Petersburg
ANSA Deputy Editor-in-Chief Stefano Polli (retranslated): Thank you.
Good evening, Mr President.
Thank you for organising this meeting. I would like to ask a question about the latest events in Ukraine. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg proposed that Ukraine be given the opportunity to hit targets on Russian territory with weapons supplied from Europe. European countries and the United States agreed with this idea. Not all of them, but the United States did. At the same time, there is a discussion in some countries about sending military advisers and instructors.
I would like to ask you to comment on these two decisions and what Russia’s reaction to them will be. Thank you.
Vladimir Putin:There is nothing new in terms of having advisers and instructors. They are present in Ukraine. Unfortunately for them, they suffer losses. I know this for sure. This is not done on purpose, but losses happen during hostilities. However, the European countries and the United States prefer to keep it secret. This is first.
Second, as for long-range precision weapons. We need to divide this topic into two parts.
First, conventional weapons: a multiple-launch rocket system, a long-range of 70 kilometres or something similar. It has been used for a long time. In fact, Ukrainian military personnel can do this on their own. And as for advanced high-tech, high-precision and long-range weapons, such as the British Storm Shadow or the American ATACMS, or French missiles, what can we say? I have also spoken about this, by the way, when I left Uzbekistan.
ATACMS: 300 kilometres. How are they used and how are they transported? They handed over a missile system (the Pentagon, the Americans did). But how is it used? Ukrainian military personnel cannot do everything on their own and launch strikes with this missile. They are simply technologically unable to do this because it requires satellite reconnaissance; then, based on satellite reconnaissance data (and this is American satellite reconnaissance), a flight mission is formed and then entered into the missile system. And then the soldier who is next to it does it simply automatically: he presses the buttons. He may not even know what will happen next.
What can the Ukrainian military – not the ones who are just sitting there and pressing buttons – but the higher-ranking ones do when it comes to target assignment? They can identify a target that is a priority for them. But they are not the ones who decide whether a particular target should be hit, because, to reiterate, a WTA (weapon target assignment) is formed and effectively entered only by those who supply the weapons. If we are talking about ATACMS, then the Pentagon is doing it. If it is Storm Shadow, then the British are. It is even more straightforward in the case of Storm Shadow, because the target assignment is entered automatically, without the involvement of the military personnel on the ground. The British do it, that is all there is to it.
And when the Bundeswehr military were pondering an attack on the Crimean Bridge or other targets, they were thinking for themselves. No one was doing it for them, right? They were going to do it. The same goes for the French specialists. Western specialists do it.
We have no illusions about it. How are we supposed to respond?
First, we will, of course, improve our air defence systems. We will be destroying their missiles.
Second, we believe that if someone is thinking that it is possible to supply such weapons to a war zone in order to deliver strikes at our territory and to create problems for us, why can we not supply our weapons of the same class to those regions around the world where they will target sensitive facilities of the countries that are doing this to Russia? The response could be symmetrical. We will give it a thought.
Third, sure enough, such actions will wreck international relations, which have already hit rock bottom, and undermine international security. Ultimately, if we see that these countries are being embroiled into a war against us, and this constitutes their direct involvement in the war against the Russian Federation, we reserve the right to respond in kind. Generally speaking, this path may lead to serious problems. I think that covers it all. If you have any leading questions, please go ahead. But I do not think I can add anything to what I just said."
As far as I understand, if Western countries continue to escalate the situation in Ukraine or in other places near Russia, they may receive a counter-response from Russia.
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