NATO Countries’ Intention to Continue War with Russia Will Backfire: Kremlin

The Kremlin spokesman drew the media’s attention to the escalation of the situation by NATO member countries and especially the United States. He emphasized that these countries "themselves intend to continue the war" with Russia - "a war in the literal and figurative sense". 

"This will, of course, will inevitably entail its consequences. It will ultimately be very harmful to the interests of those countries which have opted for the path of escalation," Peskov said, TASS reported.

In his opinion, NATO countries, primarily the United States, are consciously heading for a new round of tensions and provoking Ukraine to continue a senseless war with Russia.

"The North Atlantic Alliance’s member-countries, the United States in particular, other European capitals in recent days and weeks were coming close to a new round of escalating tensions. They are doing this on purpose," the Kremlin spokesman stated. He noted that Moscow "hears quite a few bellicose statements."

"This is nothing but a policy of provoking a new level of tensions. We realize that this negative trend in their approach unfortunately persists. They provoke Ukraine in every possible way to continue this senseless war," Peskov stated.

He was commenting on numerous statements, including those by Washington, about Ukraine's ability to attack Russian territory with Western weapons.

Earlier, NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, in an interview with the British magazine The Economist, suggested that the alliance's members reconsider whether Ukraine should be able to carry out strikes with Western weapons against military facilities located on internationally recognized Russian territory.

At the same time, at a session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the organization's secretary-general said that troops of the organization's member-countries should be absent from Ukraine’s soil and its skies. Otherwise, it would be very difficult to keep the alliance out of the conflict.

There is no unanimity among the Western countries that supply weapons to Ukraine regarding restrictions on their use. Pentagon spokesman Patrick Ryder has said the US was not assisting Kiev in using US weapons outside Ukraine.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has repeatedly noted that he rules out the possibility of supplying Kiev with Taurus cruise missiles, because Berlin would not be able to maintain control over target setting without sending German personnel to Ukraine, which, he said, was a line he did not want to cross. At the same time, The New York Times reported, citing sources, that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken after his recent trip to Kiev intended to advise President Joe Biden to lift the ban on Ukraine's strikes with US weapons on Russian territory.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on May 28 that representatives of NATO countries, when talking about strikes on Russia, should "be aware what they are playing with." He stated that Russia was closely following the discussion on this issue. In case the Ukrainian Armed Forces use long-range weapons, Moscow will have to decide again on creating a buffer zone, Putin said.