MOSCOW, August 2 (RIA Novosti) – EU's decision to lift ban on exports of military technology and equipment to Ukraine may soon result in Kiev acquiring high-precision weapons to be used in the country’s east and also in Russia, a member of the Russian Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security, Valery Shnyakin, said.
“Ukraine may get high-precision weapons that may be used against militia and against Russia,” Shnyakin said, adding that during the operation the Ukrainian army “may cross the Russian state border.”
If Ukraine attacks Russia, Moscow should respond, the senator said. “We need to respond harsher and to retaliate. We should be no more afraid of sanctions,” he added.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said earlier on Saturday that the EU member states have agreed “quietly” to lift restrictions on supplying Kiev with military equipment that may be used for “internal repressions.”
“The European Union will make every effort to whip up tension in Ukraine and will draw a line at nothing,” Shnyakin said, stressing that clashes in Ukraine are switching to a new phase, with drones to be used to collect intelligence data and active armed battles, carried out against militia.
The senator said that at the same time Europeans will be in fact advocating their and US interests in the region while speaking about the need to resolve the crisis in Ukraine by peaceful means.
Experts believe Ukraine currently has no high-precision weapons in its arsenal and can only use the Soviet-made Grad systems to clear the self-defense militia in the country’s southeast.
Igor Korotchenko, Editor-in-Chief with the National Defense magazine, has earlier compared a Grad launcher attack against the densely populated Donetsk area with using a hammer to bang in a bunch of drawing pins.
It is next to impossible to precisely hit a specific target with a weapon produced 25-30 years ago, Korotchenko said. He added that most of the weaponry in Ukraine’s stockpiles was Soviet-made, and Ukraine hadn’t come up with anything new since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Moscow, which describes the ongoing military actions as a punitive operation, has repeatedly called for an immediate end to the bloodshed.
