President Putin Warns The West Will Go Straight To War With Russia If It Allows Ukraine To Use Long-range Missiles

JAKARTA - President Vladimir Putin warned on Thursday that the West would go to war directly with Russia if it allowed Ukraine to attack its territory with a Western-made long-range missile, which he said would change the nature and scope of the conflict.

In some of his most aggressive comments on the matter, President Putin said such a move would drag countries supplying Kyiv with long-range missiles directly into the war, as satellite targeting data and actual missile flight path programming had to be carried out by NATO military personnel, as Kyiv did not yet have the capability.

"So it's not a matter of allowing the Ukrainian regime to attack Russia with these weapons or not. It's a matter of deciding whether NATO countries are directly involved in military conflict or not," President Putin told Russian state TV.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has pleaded with Kyiv allies for months to allow his country to fire Western missiles, including long-range US ATACMS and distant Storm Shadows to Russian territory, to limit Moscow's ability to launch attacks.

"If this decision is taken, it means none other than the direct involvement of NATO countries, the United States, and European countries in the war in Ukraine. This will be their direct participation, and this, of course, will change the essence and nature of the conflict significantly," he explained.

Russia will be forced to take what President Putin calls a "right decision" based on new threats.

The Kremlin leader did not explain what action could be taken, but he had spoken of options to arm Western enemies with Russian weapons to attack Western targets abroad, as well as talk about deploying conventional missiles within the US attack range and its allies in Europe in June.

Russia, which is the largest nuclear power in the world, is known to be in the process of revising its nuclear doctrine, a state where Moscow will use nuclear weapons.

The West itself is discussing whether they should allow Kyiv to use his long-range weapons to attack Russia, as part of the answer to what they say is an escalation of war by Moscow, which is said to have received ballistic missiles from Iran, a claim Tehran said was "bad propaganda".