Source: korybko.substack.com
Putin warned last week that letting Ukraine use Western long-range weapons to strike deep inside of Russia “will mean that NATO countries, the United States, and European countries are parties to the war in Ukraine. This will mean their direct involvement in the conflict, and it will clearly change the very essence, the very nature of the conflict dramatically. This will mean that NATO countries – the United States and European countries – are at war with Russia.”
He preceded his words by reminding everyone that “the Ukrainian army is not capable of using cutting-edge high-precision long-range systems supplied by the West. They cannot do that. These weapons are impossible to employ without intelligence data from satellites which Ukraine does not have. This can only be done using the European Union’s satellites, or US satellites – in general, NATO satellites…(and) only NATO military personnel can assign flight missions to these missile systems.”
Foreign Minister Lavrov briefed foreign ambassadors about this on the same day, repeating the same points as his boss but also adding that “Our experts are confident that without such (Western) specialist involvement, it would be impossible (for Ukraine) to use these complex systems. These tasks can only be performed by professionals who have worked with these systems for a long time and know how to operate them. It would be impossible to train someone to use them in just a few weeks.”
Even though Kremlin spokesman Peskov assessed that “we have no doubt that this statement has reached its recipients”, Biden still signaled that he and Starmer might very well approve this proposal regardless. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov was then quoted by TASS as saying that “We know that the corresponding decisions were made some time ago, and signals of this kind have been transmitted to Kiev.” In other words, everything that’s played out thus far is political choreography….