Top U.S. officials last week brushed off Russia’s threat of nuclear weapon use and gave Kyiv the green light to use its weapons to strike these locations.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has been one of the biggest advocates of weakening the Russian military, said Washington would not object to Ukraine using HIMARS to strike into Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, RT reported.

Blinken said the U.S. will never recognize these territories as Russian.

“Ukraine has the absolute right to defend itself throughout its territory, including to take back the territory that has been illegally seized, one way or the other, by Russia,” he said. “And the equipment, the weapons that we and many other countries are providing, have been used very effectively to do just that.”

The referendums held in these locations were called fraudulent by Western governments, while Russia insists that it is helping to save lives from the Ukrainian government.

“The results are clear,” Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, said, according to The Wall Street Journal. “Welcome home to Russia!”

Blinken said these annexations will make no difference in the U.S. support of Ukraine. He told CBS’s “60 Minutes” last month that he is in constant contact with Ukrainian leadership about what they need in terms of weaponry.

TREND FORECAST: The U.S. has been trying to provide Ukraine with weapons so it can win the war, without dragging Washington in as a party to the conflict. As each day passes, it becomes more challenging to make that distinction. Indeed, as we have noted, the U.S. is not in a proxy war with Russia, they are at war.  (See “PUTIN SENDS STERN WARNING TO THE WEST, VOWS TO KEEP UP THE FIGHT IN UKRAINE” (27 Sep 2022), “PUTIN SAYS UKRAINE WANTS WAR, WON’T NEGOTIATE FOR PEACE” (20 Sep 2022), “MEDVEDEV WARNS OF ARMAGEDDON AS U.S. AND NATO RAMP UP UKRAINE WAR” (20 Sep 2022). 

“If one country can get away with acts of aggression against another if it can simply go in and decide, ‘You know what? I’m going to take over that country. I’m going to change its borders. I’m going to grab its territory.’ If that is allowed to happen with impunity, then what happens?” Blinken said.

TRENDPOST: The Trends Journal has reported extensively on how the Ukrainian forces are simply no match for the Russian military, and it is just a matter of time before Russian President Vladimir Putin declares an all-out war against Ukraine. While the West celebrates Russia’s retreat, we see the Russian people becoming more galvanized about what they believe to be fighting for in Ukraine.

Since the start of the invasion, we noted that the U.S., NATO and Kyiv would not negotiate for peace. Among the many others, we quoted U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin (former board member of Raytheon, America’s second largest defense contractor) who stated, “We want to see Russia weakened.”

There was a rally in Moscow’s Red Square to celebrate the annexation of four regions in Ukraine’s east, and the Russian message is evolving to frame the conflict as a holy war and a fight against Western hegemony. Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “They [the West] are moving toward open satanism.”

Putin said the Western elites are teaching “sexual deviation” and said it is up to Russia to protect “our children and grandchildren from this experiment to change their souls.”

“I believe in the spiritual power of the Russian people and my spirit is its spirit, the suffering of the people is my suffering,” Putin said.

“The destruction of the Western hegemony is irreversible,” Putin said.