Juan Pablo Duch
Correspondent
La Jornada Newspaper
Tuesday, November 19, 2024, p. 24
Moscow. For the Kremlin, if the permission that the outgoing United States administration granted Ukraine to use its long-range weapons within the territory of Russia is true, which was known through multiple anonymous leaks to the American press when the Russian capital was the Sunday night, I would add fuel to the fire of the war in the neighboring Slavic country, since would cause an escalation of tension.
With these words, the spokesman for the Russian presidency, Dimitri Peskov, criticized this Monday, in his daily press conference, the alleged (until it is officially ratified or those missiles are used) crossing by the White House of the umpteenth red line set by the Kremlin.
If it is truly confirmed that Washington gave the green light to kyiv [para usar ese armamento]would qualitatively mean a new phase of tension and a greater degree of involvement of the United States in that contest, Peskov said.
He reiterated what President Vladimir Putin warned with crystal clarity in St. Petersburg in mid-September, that the United States and countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization they would go to war with Russia if they authorize the use of their long-range missiles against targets in Russian territory.
Because “those attacks,” explained the Kremlin spokesman, “could not be carried out by Ukraine alone, but rather by the countries that give permission (assuming that Great Britain with its Storm Shadow missiles and France with its SCALPs join the authorization from the United States, still pending confirmation in London and Paris) and whose specialists, relying on their satellite espionage systems, define the flight path of the rockets.”
The spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zajarova, emphasized: The use of long-range missiles by kyiv against our territory will mean the direct participation of the United States and its satellites in hostilities against Russia, as well as a radical change in the essence and nature of the conflict. In this case, Russia’s response will be adequate and tangible.
The authorization that Joe Biden would have given, in the opinion of several experts consulted, seems to be part of a new type of war in Ukraine: the psychological one, dangerous by assuming that the Kremlin is not going to resort to its nuclear arsenal to respond to the repeated affront.
Now, they indicate, Moscow knows – not by official statement, but by repeated leaks to the press – that kyiv can use long-range weapons against its territory, but it does not know where, when or how many missiles of that type Ukraine has.
By common sense, the Russian army would have to move 254 away from the war front military targets (for example, barracks, weapons hangars and fuel depots), as well as 16 airfields, which the Institute for the Study of War estimates Russia has in the range of authorized missiles.
On the other hand, it takes time to see the real meaning of the Sunday announcement. For now, although it tends to minimize the enemy’s effective possibilities, the war analysis group, Rybar, close to a sector of Russian military intelligence, assures that Ukraine – in mid-October – had only between six and eight ATACMS missiles. (acronym for Army Tactical Missile System, tactical ballistic systems), as well as 20 British and French devices, which – he considers – can be used only against the objectives decided by the alliance’s specialists. North Atlantic.
Seen this way, experts reflect, with the reservations of the case and although Ukraine has received or is about to receive new batches of these missiles, Biden’s permission is a symbolic show of support for the government of Volodymir Zelensky, but in no way represents a radical change. in the balance of forces that, in some places more in favor of one than the other, is observed in the 1,200 kilometers of the war front.
For this reason, other observers argue, the authorization was made known through anonymous sources. aware of Biden’s decisionthrough first the New York Times, then the Washington Post and from there in a chain, through the London Times and the echo generated by the news agencies and television networks (Reuters, Ap, CNN and Bloomberg; in France, Le Figaro accepted on Sunday that Emmanuel Macron’s government also authorized the use of SCALP missiles and this Monday it was denied).
Nor, they add, was specified something fundamental: whether it is allowed to hit targets 305 kilometers away, the maximum possible number of ATACMS (to date it was allowed to attack up to 165 kilometers), and at what sites within Russia.
Some media unofficially maintain that they can only be used in the Kursk region, as a supposed warning to the North Korean soldiers who, it is said, are deployed there about to enter combat, and others, on the contrary, assure that in any place within the range of those missiles, but 150 kilometers beyond the range of Moscow.
There is no shortage of those who speculate that if warheads with cluster munitions are placed in the ATACMS (in the hypothetical case that it had at least more than 100 devices), in one fell swoop, they could annihilate more than 5 million Russians living in the area. and that this, as indicated this Monday from the public television screens of this country by Russian political scientists and legislators close to the Kremlin, from Sergei Markov to Andrei Guruliov and Vladimir Dzhabarov, could lead to the third world conflagration.