On Tuesday, Moscow claimed that Ukrainian forces were planning to use Western-supplied missiles to strike targets inside Russia and the annexed peninsula of Crimea. Russia threatened “immediate retaliation,” said The Moscow Times.
The Redline
It’s another redline, and Ukraine has crossed them all. This one is probably the one they will respond to.
“The leadership of Ukraine’s armed forces plan to strike Russian territory, including Crimea, with HIMARS and Storm Shadow missiles,” Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said during a meeting with military officials.
Shoigu warned of swift retaliation if the weapons were used to strike targets inside Russia or on the Black Sea territory. Moscow annexed the region in 2014.
“The use of these missiles outside the zone of the special military operation will mean the United States and Great Britain’s full involvement in the conflict and will entail immediate strikes on decision-making centers in Ukraine,” Shoigu said.
Moscow has accused Western countries of directly waging warfare against Russia by arming Ukraine.
Stoltenberg Again Says Ukraine Decides Conditions for Peace
In an interview with Germany’s Welt am Sonntag published on Sunday, Stoltenberg declared that “peace cannot mean freezing the conflict and accepting a deal that Russia dictates.” Stoltenberg added that “only Ukraine can define the conditions that are acceptable,” an explicit endorsement of Kiev’s vow to drive Russian forces back to pre-conflict borders and seize the Russian territory of Crimea.
“If NATO, through the mouth of Stoltenberg, once again declares that they are against freezing, as they say, the conflict in Ukraine, then they want to fight,” Lavrov told a press conference. “Well, let them fight; we are ready for this; we have long understood the goals of NATO in the situation around Ukraine, which have been formed for many years.”
Russia claims the offensive will end in weeks because they’ve lost 20,000 of the 40,000 to 50,000 they had trained for the offensive.
THE HISTORY
The one thing we should not do in this case, is ignore the history.
If we allow Ukraine to attack, Crimea, we are attacking Russia based on their history.
Crimea remained part of Russia proper until 1954, when the government of the former Soviet Union transferred Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federation of Socialist Republics to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
When the west says that Crimea is part of Ukraine, they are using the 1954 soviet border.
At that time, all Soviet satellites were part of the USSR. They were all Soviet it didn’t matter.
Historically, there is no denying that 75% of the people in Crimea are Russian, speak Russian, and they would rather be part of the Russian Federation.
All we hear is that Putin forcibly annexed the Black Sea peninsula in 2014. They refer to this peninsula as simply “Russian-occupied Crimea.”
Yet, according to the Wilson Center, the population of the Crimean peninsula — approximately 1.1 million in 1954 when the Soviets threw it into the Ukrainian Republic — was roughly 75 percent ethnic Russian and 25 percent Ukrainian. That peoportion continues today.
The Accounting Error
Meanwhile, the Pentagon claims they made an accounting error of $6.2 billion in military aid to Ukraine, $3.6 billion this year, and $2.6 billion last year. They allegedly shorted Ukraine and plan to send the $6.2 billion to Ukraine instead of keeping it.
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