June 1, 2022: Ukraine is getting increasingly desperate. America, therefore, is having increasingly limited options and has chosen to provide military equipment that counts. Moscow, predictably, is increasingly furious with Washington. The world, as a result, is increasingly edgy.
News agencies have reported that Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov told state news agency RIA Novosti that Moscow views the latest US military assistance to Ukraine “extremely negatively”.
Ryabkov, Reuter said, singled out widely-reported US plans to supply Kyiv with its High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), a multiple rocket launcher system that boasts a very far range.
“Attempts to present the decision as containing an element of ‘self-restraint’ are useless,” Ryabkov was quoted as saying. “The fact that the United States, at the head of a group of states, is engaged in a purposeful pumping of weapons into the Kyiv regime is an obvious thing.”
CNN quoted American officials as saying that HIMARS could be equipped with munitions that would allow Ukraine to launch rockets about 80 kilometers (49 miles).
The US plans followed harsh criticism against the West by the embattled Ukrainian leader, President Volodymyr Zelensky, who suggested western leaders were full of anti-war rhetoric but in fact were afraid of directly crossing Russia.
Reacting to reported arrival of HIMARS, Zelensky said Ukraine would not use it in Russian territory, which he said he was not interested in one bit. “We are not fighting on their territory,” he said.
It’s good for the world to hear that, but only just.
Daily update of local and global events by Tulsathit Taptim
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