Putin Says Moscow Will Respond if West Helps Ukraine to Strike Deep into Russia

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 signaling 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, Reuters reported.
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 Zelenskiy 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.

Hannah Katzir, an Israeli woman who was taken hostage on Oct. 7, 2023, and freed in a brief ceasefire last year, has died. She was 78.

She was among the 250 hostages the Palestinian group Hamas took back into Gaza following the surprise attack that left about 1,200 people dead.

Israel’s subsequent bombardment and ground invasion have killed over 45,000 Palestinians in Gaza, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between fighters and civilians in its count.

The Hostages Families Forum, a group representing the families of people taken captive, confirmed Katzir’s death Tuesday but did not disclose the cause.

Her daughter, Carmit Palty Katzir said in a statement that her mother’s “heart could not withstand the terrible suffering since Oct. 7.”

Katzir’s husband, Rami, was killed during the attack by fighters who raided their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz. Her son Elad was also kidnapped and his body was recovered in April by the Israeli military, who said he had been killed in captivity.

She spent 49 days in captivity and was freed in late November 2023. Shortly after Katzir was freed, her daughter told Israeli media that she had been hospitalized with heart issues attributed to “difficult conditions and starvation” while she was held captive.

Putin Says Moscow Will Respond if West Helps Ukraine to Strike Deep into Russia