President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the Ukraine war was escalating towards a global conflict after the United States and Britain allowed Ukraine to hit Russia with their weapons, and warned the West that Moscow could strike back. Vladimir Putin said, had responded to the use of U.S. and British missiles by firing a new kind of hypersonic medium-range ballistic missile at a Ukrainian military facility. More could follow, Putin warned. He said civilians would be warned ahead of further strikes with such weapons. After approval from the administration of President Joe Biden, Ukraine struck Russia with six U.S.-made ATACMS on Nov. 19 and with British Storm Shadow missiles and U.S.-made HIMARS on Nov. 21, Putin said. \u201cFrom that moment, as we have repeatedly underscored, a regional conflict in Ukraine previously provoked by the West has acquired elements of a global character,\u201d Putin said in an address to the nation carried by state television after 8 pm Moscow time (1700 GMT). The United States, Putin said, was pushing the world towards a global conflict. \u201cAnd in case of escalation of aggressive actions, we will also respond decisively and in a mirror manner,\u201d he said. Vladimir Putin said the Ukrainian missile attack with ATACMS had failed to inflict any serious damage. But the Storm Shadow attack on Kursk region on Nov. 21 had been directed at a command point and led to deaths and injuries, Putin said. \u201cThe use by the enemy of such weapons is not able to change the course of the military actions in the zone of the special military operation,\u201d Putin said. \u201cWe consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities,\u201d Putin said. \u201cIf anyone else doubts this, then they are wrong \u2013 there will always be a response.\u201d Russia controls 18% of Ukraine including all of Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014, 80% of the Donbas \u2013 the Donetsk and Luhansk regions \u2013 and more than 70% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, as well just under 3% of the Kharkiv region and a sliver of Mykolaiv region. Ukraine and the West say the 2022 invasion was an imperial-style attempt to grab sovereign Ukrainian territory and that they fear Russia could try to attack a NATO member one day if Putin wins in Ukraine. Putin said Moscow had tested a new medium-range hypersonic non-nuclear ballistic known as \u201cOreshnik\u201d (the hazel) by firing it at a missile and defence enterprise in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, where missile and space rocket company Pivdenmash, known as Yuzhmash by Russians, is based. He said the attack on the enterprise was successful. Russia, he added, was developing short and medium range missiles in response to the planned production and then deployment by the United States of medium and shorter range missiles in Europe and the far east. \u201cI believe that the United States made a mistake by unilaterally destroying the treaty on the elimination of intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles in 2019 under a far-fetched pretext,\u201d Putin said, referring to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The United States formally withdrew from the landmark 1987 (INF) Treaty with Russia in 2019 after saying that Moscow was violating the accord, an accusation the Kremlin denied. Vladimir Putin imposed a unilateral moratorium on the development of missiles previously banned by the INF treaty. He said Russia\u2019s future actions would depend on the West\u2019s actions \u2013 and threats against Russia. \u201cLet me remind you that Russia has voluntarily, unilaterally committed itself not to deploy medium-range and shorter-range missiles until such time as American weapons of this kind appear in any region of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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