Putin warned the West against sending arms to Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s new warning against sending long-range rocket systems to Ukraine comes after his forces said they had destroyed Western military equipment in their first air strike on the Ukrainian capital for more than a month.

This attack shows that Russia has the capability and the will to attack the center of Ukraine, despite the redesign of efforts to seize territory in the east.

Putin’s comments came a few days after the United States announced plans to provide $ 700 million in security assistance to Ukraine in a televised interview on Sunday, which included medium-range four-rocket systems, as well as helicopters and anti-Javelin tank systems. , Radars, tactical vehicles and more.

“All this fuss about extra arms supplies, in my opinion, has only one goal: to prolong the armed conflict as much as possible,” Putin said. He emphasized that the decision was not a signal of a formal antitrust inquiry into the allegations, but rather a signal of a formal antitrust inquiry into the allegations.

If kyiv receives long-range rockets, Putin added, “Moscow will make the appropriate decisions and use our destructive means, which we have in abundance, to strike objects that we have not yet hit.”

Military analysts say Russia hopes to occupy the industrial Donbass region in eastern Ukraine before US weapons arrive. The Pentagon said last week that it would take at least three weeks for US weapons to be brought to the battlefield. Russian-backed separatists have been fighting the Ukrainian government in Donbass since 2014.

Moscow has also accused the West of blocking communications by forcing Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s plane to cancel a trip to Serbia for talks on Monday.

Serbia’s neighbors have closed their airspace to Lavrov’s plane, ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Italian television. Earlier, the Serbian newspaper Vecernje Novosti said Bulgaria, northern Macedonia and Montenegro would not allow Lavrov’s flights to pass.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that missiles fired at the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Sunday destroyed T-72 tanks and other armored vehicles supplied by Eastern European countries.

However, Ukraine said the missiles hit a train repair shop. Ukraine’s railway authority led reporters on a guided tour of a repair plant in eastern Kiev that had been hit by four missiles. Authorities said no military equipment was stored there, and Associated Press reporters found no remnants of the facility’s destroyed building.

“There are no tanks, you can witness it,” said Sergei Leshchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidency.

Yet another government adviser told national television that military infrastructure was also being targeted. AP reporters saw a burning building near the damaged wagon factory. Two residents in the area said smoking in the warehouse-like structure was part of a tank repair facility. Police, who were blocking access to the site, told an AP reporter that army officials had banned them from taking photos there.

Russia’s Defense Ministry says anti-aircraft missiles were used to destroy workshops in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, damaging Ukrainian military equipment, including Trushkivka.