Russian lawmaker warns the West over supplies of long-range missiles to Ukraine

Above, Russian Iskander-M missile launchers move along the Garden Ring road after the Victory Day military parade in central Moscow on May 9, 2023. (AFP)

• Washington and other European states are becoming parties to the war in Ukraine – Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s Duma
• Sources said last week that the US was close to an agreement to give Ukraine of long range weapons

MOSCOW: Russia will consider the United States and its allies to be parties to the Ukraine war and Moscow will use more powerful weapons if the West allows Ukraine to use long-range weapons for strikes deep into Russia, a senior lawmaker said on Wednesday.
“Washington and other European states are becoming parties to the war in Ukraine,” Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s Duma, the lower house of parliament, said on Telegram.
Volodin said that the United States, Germany, France, and Britain were becoming parties to the conflict.
“All this will lead to the fact that our country will be forced to respond using more powerful and destructive weapons to protect its citizens,” Volodin said.
US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that his administration was “working that out now” when asked if the US would lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long range weapons in the war.
Sources said last week that the US was close to an agreement to give Ukraine such weapons, but that Kyiv would need to wait several months as the US works through technical issues ahead of any shipment.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Iran had supplied Russia with ballistic missiles in what he said was a “dramatic escalation.” Tehran said the claims were “ugly propaganda.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been pleading for Western countries to supply longer-range missiles and to lift restrictions on using them to hit targets such as military airfields inside Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in June that he could deploy conventional missiles within striking distance of the United States and its European allies if they allowed Ukraine to strike deeper into Russia with long-range Western weapons.
The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution and Russia annexed Crimea, with Russian-backed separatist forces fighting Ukraine’s armed forces.
Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 with thousands of troops, triggering the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the depths of the Cold War.
Putin casts the conflict in Ukraine as part of an existential battle with a declining and decadent West which he says humiliated Russia after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 by encroaching on what he considers Moscow’s sphere of influence, including Ukraine.
The West and Ukraine describe the invasion as an imperial-style land grab by Putin and has vowed to defeat Russia on the battlefield.