French cruise missiles targeting Russia?

  

French cruise missiles targeting Russia?

Putin is rattled as NATO members warm to the idea of allowing Ukraine to attack bases deep inside Russia. French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday in Germany that he’s okay with Ukraine’s military using French-provided cruise missiles to strike Russian military bases used as missile launch points well beyond the front lines of Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion.

 “We must allow them to neutralize military sites from which missiles are being fired, military sites from which Ukraine is being attacked,” Macron said while standing beside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who did not object. Ukraine “was attacked and it should be allowed to defend itself,” Scholz told reporters Tuesday.
 
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg has also been speaking publicly about the idea. “Especially now, when a lot of the fighting is going on in Kharkiv, close to the border, to deny Ukraine the possibility of using these weapons against legitimate military targets on Russian territory makes it very hard for them to defend themselves,” Stoltenberg told The Economist last week.  

 Putin responded by alluding to Russia’s nuclear weapons, telling reporters Tuesday, “If these serious consequences occur in Europe, how will the United States behave, bearing in mind our parity in the field of strategic weapons?...It's hard to say; do they want a global conflict?” Putin said.

Sweden just announced a new military aid package for Ukraine, its largest yet at about $1.2 billion (€1,16 billion). It includes donated Airborne Surveillance and Control aircraft (ASC 890), AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles, surplus tanks (unspecified just yet), and the country’s “entire stock of armoured tracked personnel carriers (PBV 302),” Defense Minister Pål Jonson said Wednesday on social media.

“The Swedish Defence Research Agency will also be tasked with supporting Ukraine in establishing its own defence research institute,” Jonson said, and “Ukraine’s command and control capability will be strengthened in the package through a donation of terminals with subscriptions for satellite communications,” he added.