VLADIMIR Putin staged a massive show of military strength launching sub-hunting missiles in Russia’s biggest navy drills in decades.
The despot accused the West of provoking an arms race and vowed Moscow would respond if US rockets were fired into Russia.
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The chilling warning comes as Ukrainian PM Denys Shmyhal urged the West to allow troops to use long-range missiles to strike Russian territory.
The drills saw Russian and Chinese warships in the Sea of Japan in a major naval exercise that Putin described as the “biggest in the past three decades.”
Russia’s Ocean-2024 exercise involves more than 400 warships, submarines and support vessels and will take place in the Pacific, Arctic, Mediterranean, Caspian and Baltic Seas until September 16.
The Russian Defence Ministry said “more than 120 aircraft and helicopters … about 7,000 units of weapons, military and special equipment, and more than 90,000 personnel.”
Putin said the purpose of the drills was to test Russia’s “combat readiness” and vowed to respond if US rockets are used to strike targets in Russian territory.
He said: “The United States is provoking an arms race without regard for the security of its European and Asian allies, and is creating the preconditions for a dangerous crisis situation in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.
“Our armed forces must provide reliable defence of Russia’s sovereignty and national interests and repel possible military aggression in any direction, including in the ocean and maritime zone,” he added.
Meanwhile, Ukraine asked the UK for “help and support” during a meeting with the Foreign Secretary in Kyiv.
Ukrainian PM Shmyhal said: “We hope that long-range equipment for strikes on the territory of our enemy will be reached and we will have it.
“And we hope for your help and support in this issue.”
Ukraine‘s president Zelensky has repeatedly pushed for permission to use long-range weapons to strike targets within Russia.
Moscow threatened “an appropriate response” if the US allowed Ukraine to strike Russia with long-range ATACMS missiles.
Putin’s mouthpiece Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a daily briefing that it looked like Washington had already decided to allow Ukraine to use the weapons for long-range strikes inside Russia.
He said that Moscow would have an “appropriate” response if that happened but added that “there is no need to expect some kind of response everywhere.”
“To all these actions, the SMO (special military operation) is the response,” he said.
“Each of these decisions, taken by the collective West and then attributed to Ukraine, is an additional confirmation of the justification, necessity and inevitability of the SMO.”
Ukraine has only been sanctioned to deploy missiles in Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine, such as Crimea and the Donbas.
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But Sir Keir Starmer is set to discuss the matter with Joe Biden at a hastily arranged White House summit on Friday.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States were “not ruling out” permission to fire UK provided Storm Shadow missiles at Russian supply lines and airfields used to bombard Ukraine.
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