MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that Russia’s defense ministry was working on different ways to respond if the United States and its NATO allies help Ukraine to strike deep into Russia with long-range Western missiles.
The 2-1/2-year-old Ukraine war has triggered the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the depths of the Cold War, and Russian officials say the war is now entering its most dangerous phase.
Russia has been signalling to the United States and its allies for weeks that if they give permission to Ukraine to strike deep into Russian territory with Western-supplied missiles, then Moscow will consider it a major escalation.
Putin said on Sept. 12 that Western approval for such a step would mean “the direct involvement of NATO countries, the United States and European countries in the war in Ukraine” because NATO military infrastructure and personnel would have to be involved in the targeting and firing of the missiles.
Putin said that it was too early to say exactly how Russia would react to such a move but that Moscow would have to respond accordingly and different options were being examined.
“(The Russian defense ministry) is thinking about how to respond to the possible long-range strikes on Russian territory, it will offer a range of responses,” Putin told Russian state TV’s top Kremlin reporter, Pavel Zarubin.
With Russia advancing at the fastest rate in eastern Ukraine since the first months of the invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been pleading with the West to allow Kyiv to fire deep into Russia with Western missiles.
Hitting Russia
The United States has not said publicly if it will allow Ukraine to strike Russia, but some US officials are deeply skeptical that doing so would make a significant difference in the war.
Ukrainian forces already strike deep into Russia on a regular basis with long-range drones.
Putin, who ordered thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine, casts the war as a battle between Russia and the declining West, which he says ignored Russia’s interests after the 1991 Soviet collapse.
Ukraine and its Western allies say Putin unleashed an imperial-style war against its smaller neighbor and have repeatedly said that if Russia wins the war then autocratic countries across the world will be emboldened.
Just weeks before the US presidential election, Putin changed Russia’s
nuclear doctrine
in what the Kremlin said was an attempt to signal Russia’s concern over Western discussions about missile strikes from Ukraine.
Asked if the West had heard Russia’s warnings, Putin told Zarubin: “I hope they have heard. Because, of course, we will have to make some decisions for ourselves, too.”
Putin said that only NATO officers would be able to fire such weapons into Russia and that they would need to use Western satellite data for targeting the weapons so the question is really “whether they will allow themselves to strike deep into Russian territory or not. That is the question.”
US officials say the United States is not seeking to escalate the conflict.
How a new US president will approach the war is unclear: former US president Donald Trump has said he will end the Ukraine war while Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris says she will continue to support Ukraine.
Putin says Moscow will respond if West helps Ukraine to strike deep into Russia
https://arab.news/b522a
Putin says Moscow will respond if West helps Ukraine to strike deep into Russia
- Putin says defense ministry exploring responses
- Russia has changed nuclear doctrine
- Putin says NATO would have to help strikes by Ukraine
US Justice Department official eyes cases against Cuba leaders as Trump floats ‘friendly takeover’
- “Working group” formed to build cases against people connected to the Cuban government
- Trump’s has increasingly displayed aggressive stance against Cuba’s communist leadership
MIAMI: The top Justice Department prosecutor in Miami is considering criminal investigations of Cuban government officials, according to people familiar with the matter. The inquiry comes as President Donald Trump has raised the possibility of a “friendly takeover” of the communist-run island.
Jason Reding Quiñones, the US attorney for the Southern District of Florida, has created a “working group” that includes federal prosecutors and officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies to try to build cases against people connected to the Cuban government and its Communist Party, according to one of the people. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the effort.
It was not immediately clear which Cuban officials the office is targeting or what criminal charges prosecutors may be looking to bring.
The Justice Department said in a statement Friday that “federal prosecutors from across the country work every day to pursue justice, which includes efforts to combat transnational crime.”
The effort is taking place against the backdrop of Trump’s increasingly aggressive stance against Cuba’s communist leadership.
Emboldened by the US capture of Cuba’s close ally, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Trump last month said his administration was in high-level talks with officials in Havana to pursue “a friendly takeover” of the country. He repeated those claims this week, saying his attention would turn back to Cuba once the war with Iran winds down.
“They want to make a deal so bad,” Trump said of Cuba’s leadership.
While Cuba has faded from Washington’s radar as a major national security threat in recent decades, it remains a priority in the US Attorney’s office in Miami, whose political, economic and cultural life is dominated by Cuban-American exiles.
The FBI field office has a dedicated Cuba group that in 2024 was instrumental in the arrest of former US Ambassador Victor Manuel Rocha on charges of serving as a secret agent of Cuba stretching back to the 1970s.
In recent weeks, several Miami Republicans, in addition to Florida Sen. Rick Scott, have called on the Trump administration to reopen its criminal investigation into the 1996 shootdown of four planes operated by anti-communist exiles.
In a letter to Trump on Feb. 13, lawmakers including Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar and Carlos Gimenez highlighted decades-old news reports indicating that former President Raúl Castro — the head of Cuba’s military at the time — gave the order to shoot down the unarmed Cessna aircraft.
“We believe unequivocally that Raúl Castro is responsible for this heinous crime,” lawmakers wrote. “It is time for him to be brought to justice.”
While no indictment against Castro has been announced, Florida’s attorney general said this week that he would open a state-level investigation into the crime.
The Trump administration has also accused Cuba of not cooperating with American counterterrorism efforts, adding it alongside North Korea and Iran to a select few nations the US considers state sponsors of terrorism.
The designation stems from Cuba’s harboring of US fugitives and its refusal to extradite several Colombian rebel leaders while they were engaged in peace talks with the South American nation.
