Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Monday warned the U.S. against the potential “fatal consequences” of allowing Kyiv to deploy U.S.-supplied weapons against targets inside Russia.
“I would like to warn American leaders against miscalculations that could have fatal consequences. For some unknown reason, they underestimate the seriousness of the rebuff they may receive,” Ryabkov said, according to Google-translated comments carried by Russian state news agency Tass.
He noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin had repeatedly addressed the topic, giving “a very significant warning, and it must be taken seriously, with the utmost seriousness.”
Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the White House had approved a Ukrainian request to deploy U.S.-supplied weapons against targets in Russian territory, on the border near Ukrainian city Kharkiv. This use was authorized for the limited purpose of defending Kharkiv.
Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine, is just 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) away from Russia and has faced brutal and intensifying daily offensives, including numerous airstrikes.
“The hallmark of our engagement, our support for Ukraine over these more than two years has been to adapt and adjust as necessary to meet what’s actually going on on the battlefield, to make sure Ukraine has what it needs, when it needs it, to do that deliberately and effectively. And that’s exactly what we’re doing in response to what we’ve now seen in and around the Kharkiv region,” Blinken said during a press conference.
“Over the past few weeks, Ukraine came to us and asked for authorization to use weapons that we’re providing to defend against this aggression, including against Russian forces that are amassing on the Russian side of the border and then attacking into Ukraine. And that went right to the [U.S.] president. And, as you’ve heard, he’s approved the use of our weapons for that purpose.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged the U.S. concession during a press conference in Sweden last week.
“I think, anyway, this is some step forward to that goal which we discussed before: to make [a] possibility to defend our people who live in the villages through the border line, and that’s it. For today, that’s it,” he said.
Meanwhile, Russia is preparing to deploy aircraft and combat naval vessels to the Caribbean to conduct military exercises in the coming weeks, its first exercises in the Western Hemisphere involving both air and sea activity in five years, a senior administration official told McClatchy and the Miami Herald.
The Biden administration is not expressing concern over the deployment, with the official stating it poses “no direct threat to the United States.”
But the administration believes Moscow intends to use the exercises as a “messaging tactic” after President Joe Biden gave Ukraine permission last week to fire U.S.-made weapons across its border into Russia to defend its territory.
The official said the administration expects Moscow will “conduct heightened naval and air activity near the United States” that will likely include port calls by combat naval vessels in Cuba, and possibly Venezuela — two longstanding Russian allies that have seen occasional visits from Russian naval assets in the past two decades. The exercises may also include “aircraft deployments” and flights in the region, the official said.
Administration officials suspect that Cuba approved the Russian port call “at least in part” over an incident last year in which a U.S. nuclear submarine docked at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, angering the Cubans, a second U.S. official said.
Russia has sailed ships into the Western Hemisphere every year from 2013 to 2020, and has sent flights through the region that have violated the airspace of U.S. allies. But the anticipated activity would be the first coordinated air and sea exercise of its kind since 2019, during the Trump administration, the official noted.
“We expect that, as is predictable, the Russians will amp up the information space with this, both to make a point and to unsettle us,” the official said. “We’re not particularly concerned. It’s something that they’ve done before. It’s messaging for the Russians.
“This is about Russia showing they are still capable of some level of naval power projection,” the official added. “We should expect more of this activity going forward.”
Moscow did not inform the Biden administration of the maneuvers. “Ships, of course, are observable, so they kind of don’t have to,” the official said. Biden administration officials notified members of Congress of the Russian deployments earlier on Wednesday.
