“The US intelligence assessment describes a range of possible retaliatory measures by Russia, from sabotage in Europe to potentially lethal attacks on US and European military bases.”, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
The US intelligence assessment describes a range of possible retaliatory measures by Russia: from organizing sabotage in Europe, including arson, to potentially lethal attacks on American and European military bases.
According to American officials, Russia’s GRU is behind most of the sabotage attacks in Europe carried out recently. They believe that if Ukraine is allowed to strike deep into Russian territory, Russia may retaliate by continuing sabotage in secret to reduce the risk of a larger conflict.
In addition, according to the newspaper, the intelligence community believes that the permission to strike deep into Russia will not be able to fundamentally affect the course of the war, since at the moment Ukraine has a limited number of long-range missiles and it is not clear how many more such weapons the Western allies will be able to supply.
Intelligence agencies believe that after the first such strikes, Russia will most likely move ammunition depots, command posts, attack helicopters and other important objects beyond the range of the missiles.
The White House did not respond to The New York Times’ request for comment on the intelligence assessment.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi has repeatedly called on Western countries to lift restrictions on the use of long-range weapons for strikes on Russian territory. According to reports, this is one of the points of the so-called victory plan, which Zelensky presented to US President Joe Biden on September 26.
Representatives of the Russian authorities claimed that such a permission would be seen in Moscow as NATO’s entry into a “war” against Russia.
On September 25, Russian leader Vladimir Putin announced a nuclear response against the background of Kyiv’s efforts to obtain permission from the West to strike with Western weapons deep into the Russian Federation.
According to him, in the updated version of its nuclear doctrine, Russia plans to consider aggression by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state, as a joint attack.
At the same time, the American Institute for the Study of War, analyzing Putin’s statement, noted that he continues to threaten the possibility of a nuclear confrontation between Russia and the West in order to strengthen control over Western decision-making and prevent the West from granting permission to Ukraine to use long-range weapons to strike military targets in Russian Federation
“ISW has long considered Russian threats of nuclear weapons as part of the Kremlin’s plan aimed at self-restraint in the West, and not as evidence of Russia’s readiness to use nuclear weapons. ISW continues to believe that Russia is unlikely to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine or elsewhere,” the analysts emphasized.