Russia warned it would attack British military facilities and ordered its military to conduct battlefield nuclear weapons drills, in a move the Kremlin described as a response to comments by French President Emmanuel Macron about Western troops in Ukraine and British Foreign Secretary David Cameron's use of of British arms against Russia. The Kremlin announced yesterday that it summoned the British and French ambassadors as a sign of protest.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said that Cameron's statement that Ukraine has the right to use British weapons against Russia means that Britain is de facto a party to the conflict.
Cameron's statement followed Ukraine's strike on Iskander ballistic missile systems stationed in Crimea.
The British ambassador was warned that "in response to Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory with British weapons, every British military installation and equipment on the territory of Ukraine and abroad" could be a target, according to the statement of the Russian Ministry. Russia also announced yesterday that it will practice deploying tactical nuclear weapons as part of a military exercise after, as it stated, threats from France, Great Britain and the United States.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the exercises were prompted by the statements of Macron, as well as British and American officials, who talked about the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine.
"They talked about the readiness and even the intention to send armed contingents to Ukraine; that is, to actually put NATO soldiers in front of Russian troops," Peskov said.
The Ministry of Defense announced that the exercises are intended to "unconditionally protect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Russian state."
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