The Kremlin today said people should heed a warning issued by President Vladimir Putin, who said the West would enter into a direct confrontation with Russia if it allowed Ukraine to strike Russian territory with long-range missiles , produced in the West, reported Reuters, quoted by BTA.
The comment was made on a conference call on whether the decision to allow Kiev to launch such strikes could prompt Moscow to change its stance on nuclear tests.
Russia will not test a nuclear weapon as long as the US refrains from testing, an arms control adviser to Putin said yesterday, amid speculation that the Kremlin may abandon its post-Soviet moratorium on nuclear tests.
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"Please listen again and reread the statements the president has made on this matter – I mean the subject of the possible permission to use Western weapons to strike targets deep inside Russian territory,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said when asked if the position expressed by Ryabkov could change.
"The statement the president made in St. Petersburg. The position of the Russian Federation is very clearly expressed in it.“
In St. Petersburg on September 12, Putin said: "If this decision (on the missiles) is made, it will mean nothing. nothing less than the direct involvement of NATO countries, the United States and European countries, in the war in Ukraine. This will be their direct participation, and this, of course, will significantly change the very essence, the very nature of the conflict.“
Russia will be forced to take what Putin calls "appropriate decisions” based on new threats.
He did not specify what those measures might be, but in the past he has talked about the possibility of arming Western enemies with Russian weapons to strike Western targets abroad, and in June he talked about deploying conventional missiles so that within their scope of action would be the US and its European allies.
Russia, the world's largest nuclear power, is also in the process of revising its nuclear doctrine – the circumstances under which Moscow would use nuclear weapons.