Key Points
- Vladimir Putin has warned Western countries against allowing weapons they supply to Ukraine to hit targets in Russia.
- Ukraine has long requested leeway from allies to hit Russian airfields and other military targets.
- Russia also claims to have recaptured territory in its Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces recently made advances.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned the West that letting Ukraine use longer-range weapons to strike targets inside his country would put NATO “at war” with Russia.
The stark warning came as United States and United Kingdom officials discussed Kyiv’s demand for them to ease rules on firing Western weapons into Russia, more than two and a half years into Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken promised that Washington would quickly review Kyiv’s long-standing request for more leeway to use Western-supplied long-range missiles to strike Russian targets.
The US currently authorises Ukraine to only hit Russian targets in the occupied parts of Ukraine and some in Russian border regions directly related to Moscow’s combat operations.
But Kyiv wants more flexibility to hit Russian airfields and other military targets further from the front lines that it says are crucial to Moscow’s invasion.
“This would in a significant way change the very nature of the conflict,” Putin told a state television reporter on Thursday.
“It would mean that NATO countries, the US, European countries, are at war with Russia.”
“If that’s the case, then taking into account the change of nature of the conflict, we will take the appropriate decisions based on the threats that we will face.”
US President Joe Biden is expected to review Ukraine’s requests on Friday in a meeting with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Russia begins Kursk counter-offensive
Russia has claimed to have recaptured a swath of territory in its western Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces had made advances in recent weeks.
Kyiv , advancing kilometres into Russian territory and seizing dozens of settlements.
But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged that Moscow’s troops were striking back.
Ukraine’s attack — the biggest by a foreign army on Russian territory since World War Two — caught Moscow off guard as its invasion drags through its third year.
Russia has insisted from the start that it would expel Ukrainian troops from the region.
But until now it had appeared to be on the back foot, marshalling a humanitarian response and evacuating around 150,000 people.
“Units of the ‘North’ group of troops liberated 10 settlements within two days,” Russia’s defence ministry said on Telegram.
Speaking at a press conference in Kyiv, Zelenskyy said “Russians have launched counter-offensive actions”.
He did not provide details on the extent of Russian operations, but said the incursion was still “going in line with our Ukrainian plan”.
Ukraine’s commander-in-chief of armed forces Oleksandr Syrsky said in late August that Kyiv had seized 100 settlements and almost 1,300 square kilometres of Russian territory.
Kyiv says it does not want to annex parts of Russia — as Moscow has done in eastern Ukraine — but hopes it can force its enemy to divert troops and make the territory gains a bargaining chip in any negotiations.
