“This is Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine, which is a blatant violation of international law,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said.
“And according to international law, Ukraine has the right to self-defense. And it also includes strikes against legitimate military targets, Russian military targets outside of Ukraine. That’s international law, and of course, Ukraine has the right to do that to defend itself.”
I think that the article is kind of blowing the statement a bit out of proportion.
Nobody has ever said that Ukraine – which is at war – does not have the legal right to hit targets inside Russia.
The issues are just diplomatic, not legal. Some countries don’t want the weapons they supply being used to hit targets in Russia. Ukraine has been hitting targets in Russia for some time with her own weapons.
I don’t think that this will change what Ukraine is doing, nor that it represents a change in the diplomatic positions of those countries.
I agree with your view on this.
This isn’t an explicit endorsement or recommendation by NATO to attack Russia
The USA definitely doesn’t want this happening, and I can understand their reluctance. Giving weapons to Ukraine to fire into Russia is a fine line between that and attacking them yourself.
Russia won’t do anything to NATO regardless of what happens though. In an actual war with even just the US, Russia would crumple up, so as long as we aren’t literally directly striking them, all they can do is make vague threats that they can’t deliver on in hopes that western politicians who aren’t knowledgable on the matter will take them seriously (which they often do unfortunately). They’ve been doing it all war and they keep moving the goalpoast against their own favor every time NATO calls their bluff. Honestly I’ve started to doubt that they even have functional nuclear warheads considering how much they say/imply they’ll totally use them if NATO does X, right before NATO does X anyways… like they’re compensating for not having any by pretending they have a bunch.
I think most people involved in these decisions in the US know that Russia is all bark no bite, and aren’t against letting their weapons be put to use striking Russian military targets anymore. It’s just putting Ukraine at a disadvantage to restrict them from using NATO weapons in Russian territory, it keeps almost all of the damage concentrated in Ukraine… obviously not very good for Ukraine.
Russia keeps drawing lines everywhere and the west is overstepping them all the time. Nothing ever happens. It’s Putins version of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China’s_final_warning
I know that, but it’s still not a line they care to cross.
And it’s bullshit because to Putin the occupied territories are russian territory. Didn’t they annex these regions already? At least Crimea is Russia to them. Yet we still are fine with attacking Russian troops in these regions with western weapons. To Putin it shouldn’t make any difference, if UA strikes there or other parts of Russia. But somehow it does.
So Crimea isn’t russian territory after all or is that red line actually nothing more than another smoke screen?
Because it’s an arbitrary line that has no legal, moral or historical ground. It’s just Putin trying to bully other countries to not help Ukraine. And like any other bully, sometimes you just need to get past over empty threats
Trump not withstanding, the US is a huge part of NATO, and NATO wouldn’t say something like this without US government backing, or at least consent.
Are you saying when the store clerk sells me condoms we are practically having sex? I need to be more careful about which check stand I use!
Yes, those two are definitely comparable.