A top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday that Ukraine will defend itself against Russian military aggression by any means necessary, including attacks on Russian warehouses and bases, Ukrainskaya Pravda reported.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Head of the President’s Office, on Twitter referred to remarks made by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier this week at a congressional hearing.
The Washington Post reported:
Blinken said it was Ukraine’s prerogative to strike back on Russian soil. Asked whether the United States should support offensive operations, Blinken said he believed that it was “vital” that Ukraine “do whatever is necessary to defend against Russian aggression” and that “the tactics of this are their decisions.”
On Thursday, Podolyak tweeted:
Here is the English translation:
“Blinken said that Ukraine must decide for itself whether to strike at Russian military facilities. Russia has attacked Ukraine and killed civilians. Ukraine will defend itself by any means, including attacks on warehouses and bases of the Russian murderers. The world recognizes this right."
Britain’s Defense Secretary Ben Wallace echoed Blinken’s remarks in a BBC interview on Thursday, saying: "If Ukraine did choose to target the logistics structure of the Russian army, that would be legitimate under international law." He added that Ukraine does not have any British-supplied long-range weapons capable of striking targets on Russian soil.
Russia, of course, fired back with new threats. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during a briefing on Thursday that “the West is openly calling on Kiev to attack Russia, even with weapons received from NATO countries," the state-run TASS news agency reported. “We advise you not to further test our patience.”
She added: "I would like Kiev and Western capitals to take seriously the statements of our country's Defense Ministry that further Ukrainian provocations to strike Russian targets will definitely lead to a harsh response from Russia."
While Ukrainian officials have said attacks on strategic targets in Russia are justified, they have carefully avoided taking responsibility for a recent series of unexplained fires and explosions in Russia.
The Washington Post, citing Russian media, reported that on Wednesday there were “explosions at three storage depots in the Belgorod, Voronezh and Kursk regions near Ukraine’s eastern border, an area used to supply and reinforce troops engaged in Russia’s battle for control of the Donbas region.” No casualties were reported.
On Monday, explosions followed two blasts at oil storage depots in the city of Bryansk near the Ukrainian border. Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, tweeted that the blasts suggested that it was caused by “an air or missile strike,” noting that Bryansk is within range of Ukraine’s Tochka ballistic missiles.
Russia, of course, has been striking non-strategic civilian targets in Ukraine with artillery, missiles, and bombers operating from within Russian and Belarusian territory, causing massive casualties.
On Wednesday, Podolyak did not confirm or deny whether Ukraine was responsible for recent explosions in Russian border regions. Instead, the Post reported that he cited “different reasons”—including possible “divine intervention”—for the alleged attacks.
“If you decided to attack another country en masse, kill everyone there en masse, crush civilians with tanks en masse, and use warehouses in your regions to ensure the killings, then sooner or later the debts will have to be repaid,” Podolyak said in a Telegram post written in Russian. “Karma is a cruel thing.”
As in the case of the sinking of the cruiser Moskva, its Black Sea Fleet flagship, Russian media initially avoided saying what caused the recent explosions. To admit that Ukraine has been able to strike back inside Russian territory would be another major embarrassment to Vladimir Putin who promised a swift victory in what he called a “special military operation.”
At the same time, there’s reason to believe that Ukraine was not responsible for some of the attacks because they were far out of the range of Ukrainian missiles and drones, the Post reported. These include a fire last week at the Defense Ministry’s Second Central Research Institute in the town of Tver, northwest of Moscow, in which at least 11 people died, according to Tass. More than two dozen people were injured, the news agency said.The institute is known as a center for highly sensitive research on key missile systems. Tass said initial inquiries suggested the fire was caused by an electrical fault but that a criminal investigation had been launched.
Also last week, Russia’s biggest chemical plant burned down, also for unknown reasons, in the town of Kineshma, located about 208 miles northeast of Moscow. That plant was a major supplier of propellants needed for the production of precision-guided missiles.
Dmitri Alperovitch, chairman of the Silverado Policy Accelerator think tank in Washington, told the Post that there are other explanations besides sabotage for these incidents because accidental fires are not unusual in Russia , which has a reputation for poor maintenance.
The Post added: Oleksiy Arestovych, a military adviser to Zelenskyy, said he doubted Ukraine was involved in the fires at the defense-related facilities and suggested that Russian officials are setting fires to cover up evidence of corruption. “I think you need to look for reasons inside Russia—for example, hiding the means by which money has been stolen from the Russian defense ministry,” he said.
