Russian Defense minister Sergey Shoigu said Russian intelligence indicates that Ukraine is coming up with plans to use U.S. and U.K.-made artillery to strike Crimea, a move that would further not only escalate the Ukraine War, but it would officially put the U.S. and U.K. at war with Russia. 

Shoigu noted that Kyiv would use U.S. HIMARS and British Storm Shadow cruise missiles to attack Crimea. He said if Ukraine uses these missiles in such an attack, it will mean the U.S. and Britain “would be fully dragged into the conflict and would entail immediate strikes on decision-making centers in Ukraine,” indicating that Zelensky and his team would be targeted.

Video emerged last week that showed a missile hitting a bridge linking southern Ukraine to Crimea, and Russia said British missiles were used. Thus, while Ukraine did not claim responsibility for the strikes, considering the recent strike on an ammunition depot in Kherson, Kyiv was blamed for the strike as a means to impede Russia’s ability to resupply troops.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeated that his country will not stop the fight until “we return the Ukrainian flag to every corner of Ukraine,” which he said includes Crimea. 

TRENDPOST: Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland, who was a major player in the U.S.-led coup in Ukraine back in 2014, called Crimea a legitimate target for Ukrainian forces. (See “VICTORIA ‘FUCK THE EU’ NULAND CALLS CRIMEA A LEGITIMATE TARGET FOR UKRAINE, ANGERS KREMLIN” 21 Feb 2023.)

Nuland said the U.S. supported Ukrainian strikes on these targets because Washington believes Kyiv is “owed and due all of their territory within their international borders,” which she said included Crimea. 

“Ukraine is not going to be safe unless Crimea is—at a minimum, at a minimum—demilitarized,” she said.

Russia has been angered by the advanced weapons that the U.S. and U.K. have been providing Ukraine for its arsenal, including U.S.-made HIMARS and British Storm Shadow long-range, air-launched cruise missiles. These missiles have a range of nearly 200 miles, which eclipses the U.S.-provided HIMARS that have a 50-mile range. 

The U.S. missiles were also reportedly modified so they cannot reach deep inside Russia.

TRENDPOST: The U.S. has, thus far, refused to provide its Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, that has about the same range. We have reported extensively on how the U.S. has approved weapons for Ukraine that were once unthinkable. (See “UKRAINE’S ‘DREAM’ COMES TRUE, RECEIVES NATO PATRIOT MISSILES FOR AIR DEFENSE” 25 Apr 2023, “SPAIN, U.S. GET TANKS READY FOR UKRAINE IN ANTICIPATION OF NEW OFFENSIVE” 25 Apr 2023, and “U.S. AT WAR WITH RUSSIA: WASHINGTON PROVIDES COORDINATES FOR UKRAINIAN HIMARS STRIKES, REPORT SAYS.”)

Russia has said that Western countries are not waging a proxy war with Russia and—through weapons transfers, training, and intelligence—are actively waging war with Moscow. (See “READY TO DIE FOR UKRAINE? RUSSIA WARNS OF NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION” 28 Feb 2023, “RFK JR. AGREES WITH CELENTE: U.S. PUSHED RUSSIA INTO UKRAINE WAR” 9 May 2023, “PUTIN: NATO/U.S. AT WAR WITH RUSSIA” 21 Feb 2023, and “RUSSIA: U.S. CONDUCTING ‘TOTAL’ HYBRID WAR, PUTTING TWO NUCLEAR POWERS ON PATH TO CLASH” 14 Feb 2023.)

Last week, Barack Obama, the former U.S. president, explained some of the history between Russia and Ukraine and how the peninsula was annexed by Russia in 2014, while he was president without much of a response from the Western world.

“There’s a reason there was not an armed invasion of Crimea, because Crimea was full of a lot of Russian speakers and there was some sympathy to the views that Russia was representing,” he said.

Obama conveniently left out how Kyiv reportedly deployed some 125,000 troops and heavy artillery in the war-torn-disputed Donbas region before the current war and how Zelensky admitted last year that his country was involved in an eight-year conflict in the Donbas between Russian separatists that resulted in the death of over 14,000 people.

Ukraine has long accused Russia of providing weapons and troops to these separatists in Donbas, a charge that Russia denied. Moscow, in response, accused Kyiv of committing a “genocide” against the pro-Russian separatists in the region, which Ukraine denied. (See “ZELENSKY ADMITS TO ‘EIGHT YEARS OF WAR’ IN DONBAS—BUT IGNORED BY PRESSTITUTES AND POLITICIANS,” 2 Aug 2022.)

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, was asked about Obama’s comments and said, “from time to time such rational thinking finds its way out [in the US],” RT, the Russian outlet, reported.

TRENDPOST: Kyiv has good reason to deny any involvement because Moscow could consider the strike an attack on Russia. Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, warned last August that “Judgment Day will instantly await” for anyone who targets the peninsula.

Zelensky says, “This Russian war against Ukraine and against the entire free Europe began with Crimea and must end with Crimea—with its liberation” and that “Crimea is Ukrainian, and we will never give it up.”

It should be noted that, despite the continuing Western line, Russia did not attack Crimea in 2014. The Russian military already had a presence there. Under a lease agreement (which did not expire until 2047), negotiated when Russia granted independence to Ukraine, its Black Sea Fleet is based at Sevastopol port in Crimea.

Furthermore, Crimea would likely still be a part of Ukraine if the U.S. had not orchestrated a coup to overthrow the government of the democratically elected president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. (See “WASHINGTON IS DRIVING THE WORLD TO THE FINAL WAR,” 28 Apr 2014).

It was Crimeans who voted overwhelmingly—by 95 percent—to rejoin Russia, but it is internationally recognized as Ukrainian territory. The Kremlin sees Crimea as theirs.

Crimea had been part of Ukraine only since 1954, when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, a Ukrainian, designated it as such. In fact, Crimea has been part of Russia longer than the United States has been a country.