Allowing Kiev to use Western weapons system to strike Russian territory will effectively mean NATO’s direct participation in a conflict against Russia, President Vladimir Putin has said.
“An attempt to substitute concepts is being made, because we are not talking about ‘authorizing’ or ‘prohibiting’ the Kiev regime from striking Russian territory. It already does so with the help of drones and other means. But when we’re talking about the use of Western-made long-range precision weapons, it is a different matter entirely,” Putin said in an interview with Russian television on Thursday.
“I have already mentioned this, and any experts will confirm, both in our country and in the West, that the Ukrainian army is not capable of [independently] carrying out strikes using Western modern, long-range precision systems. It cannot do this. This is possible only with the use of intelligence from satellites which Ukraine does not have. This data is only available from satellites of the European Union or the United States, in other words, from NATO satellites. That’s the first point,” Putin said.
