During talks on Friday, US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer attempted to predict Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s actions in response to kyiv’s possible decision to launch strikes with Western weapons deep into Russian territory. BBC political commentator Chris Mason writes about this.
Mason covered Starmer’s visit to Washington.
Joe Biden and Keir Starmer have discussed the possibility of lifting the ban on attacks by the Ukrainian Armed Forces with Western weapons against targets inside Russian territory, the BBC reports.
According to one of Mason’s sources, London prefers to “wait and see” the question of allowing Ukraine to carry out such attacks, but President Biden is skeptical about this. He fears that such actions could drag the United States and Europe into a direct conflict with Moscow. This is precisely what Russian President Vladimir Putin has been hinting at in recent days, Mason writes.
Previously, such sabre-rattling did not lead to anything concrete; perhaps this time, too, nothing will happen, he notes. However, according to him, there is a chance that something will happen now.
“The efforts of diplomats and intelligence services are focused on the psychology of the leader of a country at war: they are trying with all their might to predict how he might react. Is he really capable of contemplating a military strike against one of the NATO countries, with the potentially dire possibility of dragging the entire bloc into a war with Russia? And if that doesn’t happen, will Ukraine’s allies be able to tolerate less direct aggression, such as cyber attacks or damage to undersea communications cables? – reports the BBC.
It should be noted that before the negotiations between Biden and Starmer, few people expected that this meeting would provide all the answers to questions about Western missiles, especially since discussions should soon continue during the UN General Assembly. After the meeting, the British Prime Minister refused to talk about whether he managed to convince the American president.
There is no clear prospect of ending the Ukrainian conflict, just as there is no clear answer to the difficult question of how to defeat Russia without provoking the Russian leadership, the article says.
What exactly could be the consequences of Western countries’ actions? And what is the cost of inaction? This is precisely the essence of the main problem that the West has been facing since the beginning of the conflict, which has already lasted two and a half years, the author stresses.
