Mike Dilger ☑️ on Nostr: So the US/German/France/Britain have told Ukraine they are now allowed to strike deep ...

So the US/German/France/Britain have told Ukraine they are now allowed to strike deep into Russia, no more restrictions on the use of Western supplied missiles.

In any normal situation, if country A and B are at war with each other, and countries C, D, and E supply weapons to country A, country B does not retaliate aginst countries C, D and E. That is, supplying weapons isn't the same thing as waging war. Normally weapons suppliers would not put any restrictions in place (except maybe "don't fire these at me!")

And Western news would have you believe this about Ukraine and Russia. That Germany, France, Britain and the US are just supplying weapons.

But most people already know this is a stretch. We read about the CIA bases along the Russian border in the NY Times. We have heard about targetting assistance from the West. We know that Ukraine and NATO have been tight since the 1990s, doing military drills together all this time, practicing to fight Russia. We know there are boots on the ground in unofficial capacity. And the economic sanctions are also a form of war. Russia knows all this and more.

The West giving Ukraine permission to make long-range strikes into Russia with their weapons is just another escalatory step. It doesn't mean we will soon see Russia striking into other Western nations. I think Russia will retaliate in a different way (I have no specific prediction). But escalation has a way of getting out of control, and every escalatory step is dangerous.

I suspect Russia has retaliated to previous escalation by covertly supporting Ansar Allah in Yemen via Iran. How else would the poorest people in the world have hypersonics to fire at Ben Gurion airport? Russia threatened this, the West ignored it, and Russia seems to have kept their word.