Putin warns West against sending arms; Kiev hit by missiles

The U.S. has stopped short of offering Ukraine longer-range weapons that could fire deep into Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s new warning to the West against sending longer-range rocket systems to Ukraine came as his forces claimed to have destroyed Western military supplies in their first such airstrikes on Ukraine’s capital in more than a month, Qazet.az reports.

The attack showed that Russia still had the capability and willingness to hit at Ukraine’s heart, despite refocusing its efforts to capture territory in the east.

Putin’s comments, in a TV interview that aired Sunday, came days after the U.S. announced plans to deliver $700 million of security assistance for Ukraine, including four precision-guided, medium-range rocket systems, as well as helicopters, Javelin anti-tank systems, radars, tactical vehicles and more.

“All this fuss around additional deliveries of weapons, in my opinion, has only one goal: to drag out the armed conflict as much as possible,” Putin said. He insisted such supplies were unlikely to change the military situation for Ukraine’s government, which he said was merely making up for losses of similar rockets.

If Kiev gets longer-range rockets, Putin added, Moscow will “draw appropriate conclusions and use our means of destruction, which we have plenty of, in order to strike at those objects that we haven’t yet struck.”

The U.S. has stopped short of offering Ukraine longer-range weapons that could fire deep into Russia.