MOSCOW: Russia has issued a new warning against Ukraine’s allies, after recent calls to loosen restrictions on Ukraine’s Western-supplied arsenal.
Now more than 900-days into the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the ominous threat comes amid increasing geopolitical frictions between Russia and Ukraine’s allies, and increasing concerns over the war’s potential for escalation.
“The flight time of the Sarmat missile to Strasbourg is three minutes and twenty seconds,” Russian political leader Vyacheslav Volodin said in a statement on Telegram.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies said that the Russian Sarmat has a range of between 6,214 and 11,184 miles, putting the French city well within its range, Newsweek reported.
Vyacheslav Volodin, who has served as the Chair of Russia’s State Duma since 2016, was writing in reply to the recent calls from the European Parliament to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western-supplied arsenal within Russian territory and to speed up the delivery of weapons to Ukraine.
Earlier, the European Parliament has passed a resolution asking European Union member countries to permit Kyiv to employ “Western weapons systems against military targets in Russia territory.”
The resolution, which was approved with 425 votes in favor, 131 against and 63 abstentions, said that, “without lifting current limitations, Kyiv cannot completely exercise its right to self-defense and remains exposed to assaults on its infrastructure and population.”
On September 11, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated that Moscow would issue an “an appropriate response if the U.S. and European governments would drop the prohibition on long-range attacks.
The development came a day following US President Joe Biden said that Washington was “working that out now,” when asked whether the US would lift the limitations on the use of its weaponry by Ukraine.
