Wednesday, August 28, 2024 -Russia has warned the West saying it was playing with fire by considering allowing Ukraine to strike deep into Russia with Western missiles and cautioned the United States on Tuesday that World War Three would not be confined to Europe.
Ukraine attacked Russia's western Kursk region on August 6
and has carved out a slice of territory in the biggest foreign attack on Russia
since World War Two. President Vladimir Putin said there would be a worthy
response from Russia to the attack.
Sergei Lavrov, who has served as Putin's foreign minister
for more than 20 years, said that the West was seeking to escalate the Ukraine
war and was "asking for trouble" by considering Ukrainian requests to
halt a ban on using foreign-supplied weapons in deep parts of Russia.
Since invading Ukraine in 2022, Putin has repeatedly warned
of the risk of a much larger war involving the world's biggest nuclear powers,
though he has said Russia does not want a conflict with the U.S.-led NATO
alliance.
"We are now confirming once again that playing with
fire - and they are like small children playing with matches - is a very
dangerous thing for grown-up uncles and aunts who are entrusted with nuclear
weapons in one or another Western country," Lavrov told reporters in
Moscow.
"Americans unequivocally associate conversations about
the Third World War as something that, God forbid, if it happens, will affect
Europe exclusively," Lavrov said.
Lavrov added that Russia was "clarifying" its
nuclear doctrine.
Russia's 2020 nuclear doctrine says the president can use a
nuclear weapon "when the very existence of the state is put under
threat".
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said earlier this
month that the assault on Russia's Kursk region showed that Kremlin threats of
retaliation or nuclear war were a bluff.
Zelenskiy said Ukraine, because of the restrictions imposed
by allies, could not use the weapons at its disposal to hit some Russian
military targets. He urged allies to be bolder in their decisions about how to
help Kyiv in the war.
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