Putin's threat to bring long-range weapons closer to the West leaves unanswered questions

Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly expressed Moscow's anger that Ukraine has won approval from some NATO allies to use Western weapons more freely to defend its borders and even to attack selected targets at the interior of Russia.

Yet analysts say this does not mean the Russian state will follow through on its threat to potentially arm other nations or actors in parallel, as Putin hinted in a rare conversation with journalists internationals this week.

“The Russians are in a very bad state of mind and this could distort their judgment in many dangerous ways, but frankly it's hard for me to imagine more horrible things they could do than what they are already doing , day after day, to their so-called relatives in Ukraine,” Stephen Sestanovich, who served as U.S. ambassador-at-large to the former Soviet Union from 1997 to 2001, said by email.

Russia has long opposed the Western weapons that have flowed into Ukraine during the all-out war, now in its third year.

But some Kiev allies have become more willing to support such weapons being used across the border, amid a recent Russian offensive on Ukraine's Kharkiv region, which has increased pressure to give kyiv more freedom to operate.

“There is no rational, pragmatic reason not to allow Ukraine to use these weapons against Russia in the most effective way possible,” Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs recently told CNN, asserting that any Fear of escalation was moot, given Russia's situation. is already doing it in Ukraine.

In recent days, Germany and the United States have joined the list of allies who approve of kyiv having more flexibility to use Western-provided firepower to deal with Russian threats – at least to defend Kharkiv, a border region that is home to Ukraine. second largest city.

Other allies have expressed stronger views on letting Ukraine operate across the border.

“We will think about it”

Amid these developments, Putin said that Russia – for reasons of retaliation – could put long-range weapons into the hands of other countries that might be able to hit Western targets.

“If they consider it possible to deliver such weapons to the combat zone to launch strikes on our territory and create problems for us, why do we not have the right to supply weapons of the same type to certain regions of the world, where they can be used to launch strikes on sensitive installations of countries that do so in Russia? ” Putin said Wednesday, during a meeting with a group of international journalists on the sidelines of an economic forum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

“We will think about it.”

Sestanovich stressed that Putin is not the only Russian official who has spoken out on the weapons issue.

“The threat of providing other countries with weapons that could harm Americans is an interesting replacement for the threats of nuclear escalation that have been Russia's usual line for some time,” said Sestanovich, who did not know exactly what form this might take.

Sestanovich suspects that behind the scenes, Russian officials “were probably quite surprised” by Western countries' limits on the weapons they send to Ukraine.

It's possible that these officials “began to feel entitled to this restraint,” he said.

Nuclear clashes continued in St. Petersburg, however, with Putin reaffirming Russia's willingness to use such weapons if its sovereignty was threatened.

Dani Nedal, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Toronto, noted that Putin's “vague” comments in St. Petersburg lacked details on precisely where such long-range weapons could be sent.

He noted that Russian contacts such as China, Iran and North Korea have ongoing missile programs and do not need supplies elsewhere.

“We should not take this entirely as a bluff,” said Nedal, who nevertheless believes that it is more of a warning from Putin than a threat.

Some, however, see a greater threat in Putin's remarks.

Oleg Ignatov, senior Russia analyst for the International Crisis Group, a nongovernmental organization, sees a shift in Moscow's rhetoric.

“Moscow used to say that it would simply destroy Western weapons if they were sent to Ukraine,” he said in an email.

“Now Putin says that Russia will retaliate against Western countries themselves. This is a significant change. This shows that the war in Ukraine is currently on the path of escalation.”

Message and meaning

Nedal said it would be instructive to watch messages from Russian officials in the coming days.

On Thursday, Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Russian president, told state television that he believed Putin's warning had been heard and was being studied in the West.

“They have to take us and our position into account,” he said.

In a previous conversation with journalists, Peskov refused to specify where Moscow could send such weapons.

US President Joe Biden has since released his own message on the matter on Thursday.

In an interview with ABC News, Biden emphasized that Washington supports the use of these weapons for a limited purpose: to help Ukraine quell Russian attacks on Kharkiv.

“We're not talking about giving them weapons to hit Moscow, to hit the Kremlin,” Biden said. “Just across the border they are receiving significant fire from conventional weapons used by the Russians to enter Ukraine and kill Ukrainians.”

The Russian invasion of its neighbor disrupted life in Ukraine for almost 28 months, caused thousands of civilian deaths and destroyed a staggering number of buildings and infrastructure.

But Ukraine has imposed heavy losses on Russia, with Pentagon officials saying earlier this year that Moscow had seen some 315,000 troops killed or wounded in the conflict.

When speaking to reporters, Putin would not specify the scale of Russia's military losses, although he said Ukraine's losses were five times those of Russia.