The cold war surrounding the invasion of Ukraine has escalated rapidly on Wednesday. The president of the United States, Joe Biden, will approve this Wednesday a new military aid package for Ukraine that includes weapons to stop the invasion that the country has been suffering for 100 days. Shortly after, Russia has responded with nuclear maneuvers and has accused the US government of “add more fuel to the fire” by sending weapons.
As reported by the Russian Defense Ministry, the maneuvers consisted of an exercise with around 1,000 soldiers and a hundred vehicles in the province of Ivanovo, some 300 kilometers from Moscow. Among the weaponry used were Yars intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The statement on these practices made no reference to Biden’s arms shipment. However, hours later the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told the press that “the United States is adding fuel to the fire on purpose and diligently,” according to what he has collected. Asked what would be the consequences of Ukraine using US weapons against Russian soil, Peskov said: “Let’s not talk about the worst scenarios.”
Despite the mobilization of the nuclear branch of the Russian army, Biden recognized today in an article in The New York Times for now there is no need to be alarmed. “At the moment we see no indication that Russia intends to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, although Russia’s rhetoric to sound the nuclear saber is itself dangerous and grossly irresponsible.”
The key is in the HIMARS artillery
The Russian anger responds to the escalation of arms that the Pentagon has given with the new shipment, endowed with 700 million dollars in weapons and which includes missile-launching vehicles much more advanced than the artillery supplied so far by the West to Ukraine.
The Biden Administration revealed this Tuesday that among the material are the HIMARS artillery teams, a vehicle that launches with a range of 80 kilometers and with a great capacity to damage other vehicles and infrastructure. The new weapons package also includes ammunition, various air surveillance radars, Javelin anti-tank missiles, and anti-armor weapons.
The Ukrainian government and military have been asking the United States for HIMARS equipment for weeks, but until now Biden has opposed it out of fear it could take the war to a new level of destruction. However, Ukraine has promised not to fire with it into Russian territory.
The Ukrainian president himself, Volodimir Zelensky, appeared on American television this Tuesday denying the misuse of weapons. “I know that people in the United States are saying, or someone in the White House is saying, that we could be using them to attack Russia. Look, we’re not planning to attack Russia. We’re not interested in the Russian Federation. We’re not fighting on your territory,” he said in an interview on Newsmax TV.
The importance of the HIMARS missile launchers is key in a war marked by artillery bombardment, which up to now has been very intense on the part of both sides, as shown by . Its power has been devastating both from the Russian side to besiege cities, and from the Ukrainian side to destroy Russian tanks.
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