Photo: YASUYOSHI CHIBA / AFP / Getty Images
Russia warned that it will launch a “proportional response” against Great Britain, if it continues to provoke Ukraine after the British ministers endorsed the attacks against Russia.
The pronouncement comes after UK Armed Forces Minister James Heappey said Ukrainian air strikes on Russian soil were “completely legitimate”.
Confirming UK government support for attacking logistics structures in Russia, Heappey told Times Radio: “It is completely legitimate for Ukraine to target deep within Russia to disrupt logistics which, if left uninterrupted, would directly contribute to death and the carnage on Ukrainian soil,” said Heappey.
He added: “The things that the international community is now providing to Ukraine have the scope to be used beyond the borders. When you use those pieces of equipment, you don’t tend to blame the country that made it, you blame the country that fired it.”
But the Russian Ministry of Defense warned: “We would like to underline that London’s direct provocation of the kyiv regime for such actions, if such actions are carried out, will immediately lead to our proportional response”.
“As we have warned, the Russian Armed Forces are ready at 24 hours to launch retaliatory strikes with high-precision long-range weapons on decision-making centers in kyiv”.
Meanwhile, the United States brought together 80 nations on Tuesday to provide long-term military aid to Ukraine, as Russia raised the specter of nuclear war if NATO members continue to send weapons to the beleaguered country.
Defense officials of dozens of pa íses met at the US air base in Ramstein, Germany, where the agenda turned to speeding up arms shipments.
In a dramatic turn , Germany announced that for the first time it would send air defense tanks to Ukraine. Other nations promised howitzers, tanks, rockets, drones, hand grenades and rifles.
Meanwhile, in what appears to be Ukraine’s latest tactical attack, a Russian ammunition depot was seen ablaze this morning.
According to reports, the ammunition depot in the Belgorod region was on fire and the images show a huge column of fire and smoke rising above the landscape .
Two more attacks were also suspected with reports of explosions in the Voronezh and Kursk regions.
Ukraine has not confirmed the attacks, but the video appears to show the launch of anti-aircraft missiles in the area.
Russia expanded its assault on the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine during the night, saying that his forces killed 500 members of “enemy personnel”, a claim that could not be rified, and attacked military targets in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city.
Ukraine cited new attacks on civilians and military sites.
“Russian troops have launched an offensive in all directions,” said Oleksiy Arestovych, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
He said Russia was was concentrating on the cities of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk in the east and Kryvyi Rih, Zelensky’s hometown, in the south.
The Ministry of British defense said on Tuesday that the Russians had also taken Kreminna, in the Luhansk region, although Ukraine did not confirm the fall of the city.
Authorities said two missiles hit the central city of Zaporizhzhia, killing at least one person.
In the southern city of Kherson, which fell to Russia in the early g war, the occupiers scheduled a vote this week on the creation of the so-called independent People’s Republic of Kherson.
The measure, which Zelensky described as a “fake referendum” would follow a long-term Russian strategy of fomenting unrest in the eastern Donbass region, where pro-Russian separatists have already declared Luhansk and Donetsk breakaway republics.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that one of the the main reasons he invaded Ukraine was to “liberate” ethnic Russians.
In a video address overnight, Zelensky said that Ukraine has lost around 3,04 soldiers compared to unconfirmed estimates of up to 15,04 deaths among the Russians and affirmed that his country will continue to fight to “make the stay of the occupants in our land be even more intolerable”.
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