MOSCOW, May 31. /TASS/. NATO countries sending weapons to Ukraine to strike Russia is dangerous, as Moscow’s response will be so devastating that it will throw the entire alliance into the conflict, Russia’s Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday.
"NATO’s leadership wants to pretend that this issue is about sovereign decisions by each individual country and there is no reason yet to apply the rule of the 1949 Collective Defense Treaty," Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel.
This "individual aid," Medvedev continued, is about "controlling its long-range cruise missiles or sending a contingent of troops to Ukraine. This is a serious escalation of the conflict."
"These are dangerous and harmful delusions," he noted. "Former Ukraine and its NATO allies will receive a response of such destructive force that the alliance itself will simply not be able to keep itself out of the conflict."
In an interview with the Economist earlier in the month, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg suggested NATO allies should reconsider whether Ukraine could use Western-supplied weapons to carry out strikes on military facilities inside Russia's internationally recognized borders. However, Stoltenberg said at a session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly that there should be no NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine because otherwise, it would be difficult to keep the bloc out of the conflict.
Meanwhile, The New York Times reported, citing its sources, that after his recent visit to Kiev US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that he planned to suggest that President Joe Biden lift the ban on using American weapons against targets in Russia.
On May 28, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that when speaking about strikes inside Russia, representatives of NATO countries, "should be aware of what they are playing with." According to Putin, Russia is closely monitoring such a discussion. Once Ukraine’s military uses long-range weapons, Moscow will once again have to decide on ‘a sanitary zone,’ Putin said.