ARCHIVE – A Leopard 2 main battle tank during a Bundeswehr exercise – will western Ukraine provide heavy weapons of this type? Photo: Peter Steffen/dpa
This is taking the conflict to “a qualitatively new level, which does not bode well from the point of view of global and pan-European security,” warned Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Thursday, according to the Russian news agency Interfax. At the same time, he restricted nuclear threats to the West made by Russia’s ex-President Dmitry Medvedev.
Just the discussion about the delivery of weapons “that allow strikes against Russian territory is potentially extremely dangerous,” said Peskov. The 55-year-old said that Ukraine already had such armaments that it was using to attack Russian territory. Peskov specified that he meant the Ukrainian regions of Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhia, which Russia annexed in the autumn.
Peskov dismissed speculation that Moscow would tighten its nuclear doctrine. The question arose after Medvedev’s statement that the defeat of a nuclear power in a conventional war could provoke a nuclear war. Nuclear power Russia has repeatedly stated that it wants to win a victory in its war in Ukraine.