Kremlin aide says the West helped Ukraine attack Russia
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Ukrainian servicemen on a tank near the border with Russia, in the Sumy region of Ukraine, on Aug 14.
PHOTO: AFP
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MOSCOW - An influential aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Aug 16 that the West and the US-led Nato alliance had helped to plan Ukraine’s surprise attack on Russia’s Kursk region, something Washington has denied.
The lightning incursion, the biggest into Russia by a foreign power since World War II, unfurled on Aug 6
The US and Western powers, eager to avoid direct confrontation with Russia, said Ukraine had not given advance notice and that Washington was not involved, though weaponry provided by Britain and the US was reported to have been used on Russian soil.
Influential veteran Kremlin hawk Nikolai Patrushev dismissed the Western assertions in an interview with the Izvestia newspaper.
“The operation in the Kursk region was also planned with the participation of Nato and Western special services,” he was quoted as saying, without offering evidence.
“Without their participation and direct support, Kyiv would not have ventured into Russian territory.”
The remarks implied that Ukraine’s first acknowledged foray into sovereign Russian territory since Moscow sent its forces into Ukraine in 2022
Kremlin says Ukraine will pay for US involvement
“Washington’s efforts have created all the prerequisites for Ukraine to lose its sovereignty and lose part of its territories,” Mr Patrushev said.
Ukraine said on Aug 15 that it had installed a military commandant in the area it controlled, even as Russia intensified its offensives in Ukraine’s east.
While the Ukrainian attack has revealed weaknesses in Russian defences and changed the public narrative of the conflict, Russian officials said Ukraine’s “terrorist invasion” would not change the course of the war.
Russia has been advancing for most of the year in the key eastern sector of the 1,000km front and has vast numerical superiority. It controls 18 per cent of Ukraine.
After more than 10 days of fighting, Ukraine holds at least 450 sq km of territory, or less than 0.003 per cent of Russia. But for Mr Putin, the incursion crosses another red line.
He said on Aug 12 that Russia would deliver a “worthy response” beyond ejecting Ukraine’s forces.
One Russian source told Reuters the incursion could embolden hardliners in Moscow who advocate a bigger war, but Mr Putin’s choice may not be easy.
He has sought to portray Europe’s biggest war in seven decades both as a limited “special military operation” that need not upset daily Russian life, and as a historic fight with a West that scorns Moscow’s interests and seeks to dismember Russia.
Trying to avoid Nato-Russia conflict
The US, which rejects such allegations but says it cannot allow Russia to seize part of a sovereign neighbour, so far deems the surprise incursion a protective move that justifies the use of US weaponry, officials in Washington said.
But they also expressed worries about complications as Ukrainian troops push further into enemy territory.
One US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that if Ukraine started taking Russian villages and other non-military targets using US weapons and vehicles, it could be seen as stretching the limits Washington has imposed, precisely to avoid any perception of a direct Nato-Russia conflict.
Britain said on Aug 15 that weaponry it had given to Ukraine could be used inside Russia to help Kyiv defend itself, and a British source said British Challenger 2 tanks were thought to have been used on Russian territory.
Russia’s Defence Ministry has published footage that it said showed a Russian drone destroying a US-made Stryker armoured combat vehicle in the Kursk region.
Separately, the Defence Minister of Belarus, which Russia used as one launch point for the conflict in 2022, said there was a high probability of an armed provocation from Ukraine, and that the situation at their common frontier was “tense”. REUTERS
