Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has blasted calls in Washington to ship long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to Kiev, calling these proposals an example of “psychological warfare.”
“This is an element of psychological warfare. This psychological warfare is part of the ongoing, intensifying hybrid war being waged by the collective West led by the United States against Russia,” Ryabkov said in a press conference on Monday, answering a question by a Sputnik reporter.
The senior Russian diplomat warned that the continuing escalation of tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine is an incredibly dangerous path, “the consequences of which could be unpredictable.”
“The signals we are sending are not being heard. Russia’s adversaries continue to raise the stakes, but the goals of the special military operation will be achieved no matter what, and all the equipment being sent [to Ukraine] in increasingly large numbers from various sources will be ground up, in the literal sense of the term,” Ryabkov said.
Ryabkov’s remarks come amid growing calls by hawkish lawmakers in Washington asking the Biden administration to send ATACMS to Kiev.
On Sunday, Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign relations Committee, told US media that Washington should immediately deliver heavy weapons, including tanks and missiles.
“The Wall Street Journal had an editorial that said we’re giving [Ukraine] just enough to bleed through months without a chance for victory. That’s the problem here. They need the tanks, and they need the tactical long-range artillery, known as ATACMS,” McCaul said.
“They need these tanks on the eastern flank and the Donbass. They also need ATACMS, the longer-range artillery, to hit Crimea where the Iranian drones are,” the congressman said – referencing the oft-stated but unconfirmed Western and Ukrainian claim that the Russian drones operating in Ukraine are “Iranian.”
McCaul rejected the suggestion by his interviewer that “hitting” Russian territory would cross a red line with Moscow. “That’s the assumption that Crimea’s part of Russia. It was illegally invaded upon in violation of international law. I don’t consider Crimea to be part of Russia,” the lawmaker said, adding that he was convinced Russia wouldn’t “react” to its territory being struck by US missiles in any substantive way.
Crimea became a part of Russia in the spring of 2014 after a peninsula-wide referendum in which over 95 percent of residents voted to break off from Ukrainian jurisdiction following a US-backed coup d’état in Kiev.
What are ATACMS?
A Pentagon official announced last week that Washington won’t be providing ATACMS to Ukraine for now, expressing confidence that “the Ukrainians can change the dynamic on the battlefield and achieve the type of effects they want to push the Russians back without” these weapons.
The MGM-140 ATACMS is a long-range surface-to-surface missile manufactured by Lockheed Martin. In service with the US and allied forces since the 1990s, the weapon fires 230 kg fragmentation warhead, and has a range of up to 300 km. The missile can be fired using M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and M270 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS), both of which have already been deployed in Ukraine.
The ATACMS was first used during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and in the US wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq in the 2000s.
