Russia Threatens Ukraine, West With ‘Brutal’ Response as Long Range Missile Deal Looms

Former Russian President and current Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev speaks at a meeting in Moscow, Russia, on Feb. 22, 2022. Yekaterina Shtukina/Sputnik, Government Pool Photo via AP

Top Russian officials have threatened the West if Kyiv is allowed to fire Western-supplied long-range missiles into Russian territory.

“The decision is there, all the carte blanche, indulgences have been issued [to Kyiv]. Therefore, we will respond in a brutal way,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Sept. 14, according to Russian state-owned TASS news agency.

“There is an element of serious risk here, because the opponents in Washington, London, and other places clearly underestimate the degree of danger of the game they continue to play,” Ryabkov said.

The threats were made as President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met to discuss, among other topics, if Kyiv should be granted permission to strike targets inside Russia with donated long-range missiles. Ahead of the talks at the White House, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Western nations that such a move would be deemed as NATO’s “direct participation” in the war.

“This would in a significant way change the very nature of the conflict,” Putin said, according to the Kremlin’s official Telegram channel. “It would mean that NATO countries, the United States, European countries, are at war with Russia.”

Washington has clarified that, at least for now, it is not planning to loosen the restriction on Ukraine’s use of Western weaponry.

“There is no change to our view on the provision of long range strike capabilities for Ukraine to use inside of Russia,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Sept. 13 before the Biden–Starmer meeting. “There’s just no change to our policy right now with respect to that capability, for all the reasons that we said we weren’t in support of it before.”

Dmitry Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008 until 2012 and is now deputy chairman of the country’s Security Council, warned that while Russia will refrain from responding to Ukrainian long-range missile strikes with nuclear force for now, its patience may eventually run out.

“The Russians talk a lot about responding with weapons of mass destruction, but they do nothing,” Medvedev wrote Sept. 14 on messaging platform Telegram. “The Russians will not cross the border. They just threaten. A nuclear conflict is useless for them, they have a lot to lose, including the support of the Global South.”

According to Medvedev, Ukraine’s recent attack on Russia’s Kursk region already gives the Kremlin a valid reason to use nuclear weapons, but it instead chose to exercise patience, recognizing the severity and irreversibility of such a response.

“Who needs an apocalypse?” wrote Medvedev, a long-time ally of Putin. “This is a very bad story with a very difficult outcome.”

Russia could still reduce the city of Kyiv to ruins without resorting to its nuclear arsenal, Medvedev wrote.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly called on Western allies to authorize missile use into Russia, arguing it is the only way to protect Ukraine’s cities and key infrastructures from relentless bombardment and to bring about an end to the war.

No new pledges about Ukraine were made following Starmer’s visit. The White House said the two leaders had “expressed deep concern” about Iran and North Korea supplying weapons to Russia, as well as China’s support for Russia’s defense industrial base.