Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Thursday that should Ukraine use Western-made high-precision long-range weapons against Russia, this would represent the NATO countries' "direct participation" in military operations in Ukraine.
Speaking at the Saint Petersburg International Forum of United Cultures, Putin insisted that Ukraine "cannot carry out strikes with modern high-precision long-range systems of Western manufacture [without] using intelligence data from European Union or United States satellites."
Putin claimed that only the military personnel of the NATO countries can give out flight assignments to these systems. "This will mean that the US and European countries are fighting Russia," he underlined, adding that should this happen, Moscow will make "appropriate decisions" over newly-arising threats.
