P.President Vladimir Putin has threatened the West with “appropriate military-technical response measures” “in the event that an“ openly aggressive line ”against Russia is continued. One will react “harshly” to “unfriendly steps”, said Putin on Tuesday at a meeting in the Defense Ministry in Moscow and again called for “long-term, legally binding security guarantees”. As examples of alleged threats, Putin cited NATO maneuvers “on the Russian borders” and missile defense systems in Romania and Poland, which Moscow has long been concerned about.
“They do what they want,” Putin accused the United States; events in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Syria have shown that. But what the Americans are “doing or trying to do now in the Ukraine area” is “on the threshold of our house”. The Americans should understand that Russia has “nowhere to go back”.
“Military-technical alternative”
Russia has concentrated tens of thousands of troops on the border with the neighboring country and in the annexed Ukrainian Crimea, and an open invasion is feared in the west and in Kiev. Putin, on the other hand, now sketched the deployment of American supersonic weapons in Ukraine as a threat scenario. Meanwhile, the president conceded that these weapons did not exist, unlike supersonic weapons that Russia had. But one “roughly” knows when the Americans will have finished developing such weapons, Putin said. Then “extremists” from the neighboring country “under cover” of such weapons delivered to Ukraine could be sent “to Russia”, for example “to the Crimea”. The FSB secret service has been arresting Ukrainians as “spies” on the peninsula and in Russia for years.
Last week Moscow presented drafts of treaty “security guarantees” from NATO and America to Russia, which should exclude any expansion of the alliance as well as any military activity in regions that Russia claims to be “spheres of interest”. Putin has now said that one is hoping for a “clear, exhaustive answer” and negotiations “within certain deadlines”, which he did not specify. He also stressed that it was not an ultimatum. There is a “danger”, Putin said, that “all of our proposals will be sunk in the swamp”. The United States alone is to blame for the current “tension” in Europe.
At the same meeting, Defense Minister Sergei Shojgu said that “more than 120 employees of American private military companies” were present in Kiev-controlled parts of Donbas, who were preparing Ukrainian forces for “active military action”. Shyogu also spoke of “provocations” for which “unidentified chemical components” were brought to two eastern Ukrainian cities. In addition, Ukrainian soldiers shelled positions of the security forces in the “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk, which “provoked response measures”. The Kremlin has announced that it will react harshly to any “provocation” by Ukraine. In addition, in the event that the West does not respond to Moscow’s negotiating demands, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs promised a “military-technical alternative” over the weekend.