Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reportedly asked President Biden to formally green-light Ukrainian strikes against targets deep inside Russia using US-provided long-range weaponry amid growing pressure from hawks in Washington.
Sputnik asked seasoned international affairs observer Scott Ritter about the development’s dangerous endgame.
House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul added fuel to the fire of escalatory rhetoric swirling around Washington regarding restrictions on Ukraine’s use of American long-range strike (nuclear) weapons.
Secretary Blinken’s testimony shows areas of Russia with hundreds of kilometers from the Ukrainian front-lines that weapons like ATACMS and HIMARS could hit.
When it comes to enabling or endorsing attacks outside of Ukraine, that’s not something we’ve done, but Ukraine will have to make and will make its own decisions and the USA wants to make sure that it gets the equipment that it needs.
McCaul’s counterparts in the Russian Duma and Senate slammed the congressman’s madness and apparent loss of instinct for self-preservation, warning that Russia would be forced to take tough and swift measures in response to such blatant aggression.
But the debate in Washington regarding direct USA approval for Ukrainian missile attacks deep inside Russia constitute little more than word games, says former US Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter.
Ukraine is already attacking critical energy facilities inside Russia, oil tanks, petroleum depots. This is taking place, like the sabotage on the Nord Stream gas pipeline. It’s just that it’s not taking place with State Department or Department of Defense connivance.
It’s taking place with the assistance and the facilitation of the Central Intelligence Agency – a covert war. All Tony Blinken is now talking about is taking this covert NATO war and making it an overt war. Why is he doing this? Domestic American politics.
It will have no impact on the battlefield. But what it does is allow the Biden administration to posture itself as doing something discernable to address the Russian successes.
Like the successful offensive north of Kharkov, the continuing successful liberation offensives in eastern Ukraine and Novorossiya, Ritter told Sputnik.
The catastrophic situation for Ukraine is seen by the Biden administration as a political problem during an election year, and Blinken is trying to come up with a political solution, the military and international affairs observer explained.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, meanwhile, recommended to McCaul that the first place in the Russian interior to be targeted by long-range US missiles is the American Embassy in Moscow.
Legally, retired soldier said, Russia would have the right not only to strike decision-making centers and launch sites inside Ukraine, but also those facilitating the attacks, potentially including American decision-making centers in Europe, like in Italy, Germany and Holland.
Ukraine is on a path of decisive defeat that could occur sometime this year. And no expansion of the target deck is going to change that reality.
Sputnik / ABC Flash Point WW III Europe News 2024.
USA/NATO looking to use puppet regime in Ukraine to strike with nuclear weapons into Russia, and keep their hands clean!
But it’s shortsighted. It won’t resolve the military problems that are being confronted by the Ukrainians. What it will do is create the dangerous potential for the kind of escalation that the Biden administration has been assiduously seeking to avoid – an escalation that would lead to a direct confrontation between Russia, the United States and NATO. An escalation that could see this conflict move away from conventional war into the possibility, indeed probability of nuclear conflict