RFK Jr urges Biden not to approve long-range missiles for Ukraine: ‘Reckless escalation’
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. slammed President Biden’s administration for continuing to provide Ukraine with long-range missiles on Saturday, arguing it was a major escalation of the conflict.
Kennedy called out both Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a statement on X, formerly Twitter. He made the comment in relation to reporting that the U.S. is set to approve Ukraine using long-range missiles to strike inside Russia.
“Secretary Blinken, President Biden — STOP IT! Stop this reckless escalation. I say this not as a political partisan, but simply as a citizen of the world,” Kennedy wrote.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said his regime will “take appropriate decisions based on the threats.”
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The U.S. and other Western nations have prohibited Ukraine from using NATO-supplies weapons in attacks on Russian territory, demanding they only be used for defensive purposes.
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Since then, however, Ukraine has launched multiple incursions into Russia in an attempt to turn the tide of the conflict. Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelenskyy has also been pushing the U.S. and NATO to remove the targeting restrictions for months.
But Putin on Thursday drew a red line and said, “This will mean that NATO countries, the U.S. and European countries are at war with Russia.”
“And if this is so, then, bearing in mind the change in the very essence of this conflict, we will make appropriate decisions based on the threats that will be created for us,” he added, according to a translation posted by NBC News.
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Putin has made threats about conflict with the U.S. and NATO throughout his invasion of Ukraine, warning Western powers to stay out of it. International support for Ukraine has turned the invasion into a costly one for Putin.
“Putin’s war in Ukraine has been a massive failure – hundreds of thousands of casualties, a brain drain, a million Russians have fled, Sweden and Finland are now NATO members, the list goes on,” former CIA Moscow station chief Dan Hoffman told Fox News Digital. “The only thing he succeeded at is rhetorical nuclear brinkmanship and other threats, trying to induce the Biden administration not to give Ukraine what they need, when they need it, to defend themselves.”
Hoffman said Putin’s remarks were likely tailored to Biden and his administration, which has repeatedly been slow to send Ukraine sorely needed defense equipment like tanks, F-16s and long-range ATACMS missiles before then reversing course and eventually agreeing to send the top weaponry.
“He makes these threats because he knows they work,” Hoffman argued. “We shouldn’t be micromanaging how [Ukrainians] conduct their war.
Fox News’ Caitlin McFall contributed to this report