At an August 27 press conference, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov cited as “blackmail” Ukraine’s demand that it be allowed to use Western weapons to strike Moscow and St. Petersburg. He reminded the world that Russia has a nuclear weapons use policy, according to the Foreign Ministry website:
“This is blackmail, an attempt to pretend that the West seeks to avoid any excessive escalation. In reality, they are full of mischief. Avoiding escalation is not what the West is after. To put it into plain language, they are simply picking a fight. I think that this has become obvious to everyone,” he said responding to media questions following his meeting with Yemeni Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Shaya al-Zindani in Moscow.
Lavrov warned that the West was playing with fire whenever it started discussions on this topic.
“We have long been hearing speculation about authorizing Ukraine to use not only the Storm Shadow missiles, but also U.S.-made long-range missiles. There was an anonymous source in Washington who said that they were working on it. This source purported that their overall view of Ukraine’s request is quite positive. I will stop at that. President Vladimir Putin said all about it quite a while ago.
