MOSCOW, August 13. /TASS/. The deliveries of Western long-range weapons to the Kiev regime will only expand the geography of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, Director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s North American Department Alexander Darchiev told TASS on Saturday.

"As for the correlation of the massive deliveries of Western weapons to Kiev and the pace and the timeframe of the special military operation, it was clearly outlined by [Russian Foreign Minister] Sergey Lavrov. The policy of beefing up Ukraine with longer-range weapon systems will only cause the geographical objectives of the special operation to move even farther," the senior diplomat pointed out.

"Russia cannot allow it that armaments posing a direct threat to our country, the DPR and the LPR [the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics] and the liberated areas stay on the other Ukrainian territory," he stressed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on February 24 that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics for assistance he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in Ukraine. The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories, noting that the operation was aimed at the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine.

In response to Russia’s decision, the West began to impose numerous large-scale sanctions on Russia stage by stage. Along with this move, Western countries began to supply weapons and military equipment worth billions of US dollars to the Kiev regime.