MOSCOW (Dispatches) --
Russia vowed on Tuesday its assault on Ukraine would continue until Kyiv surrenders.
And ahead of a key meeting of the NATO allies, U.S. President Joe Biden and fellow leaders pledged military aid for Kyiv and economic pain for Moscow.
But President Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin was unmoved, warning that Ukraine’s forces’ only option was to lay down their arms in the face of the Russian operation.
“The Ukrainian side can stop everything before the end of today,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
“An order for the nationalist units to lay down their arms is necessary,” he said, adding that Kyiv had to fulfill a list of Moscow’s demands.
Russia’s space agency published the coordinates of Western defense headquarters including the U.S. Pentagon and the venue of NATO’s summit on Tuesday, saying Western satellite operators were working for Russia’s enemy - Ukraine.
Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, told the Russian RIA Novosti news agency: “The entire conglomerate of private and state orbital groupings is now working exclusively for our enemy.”
Members of the U.S.-led NATO alliance make no secret of the fact that they are sending weapons to help Ukraine.
The U.S. satellite imagery company Maxar, whose clients include the U.S. Defense Department, has several times published pictures it has taken over Ukraine and Russia since before the operation began in February.
They included images of Russia’s military build-up near Ukraine, at a time when it was denying any intention to invade.
“Today, the NATO summit opens in Madrid, at which Western countries will declare Russia their worst enemy,” Rogozin wrote on his Telegram social media channel.
“Roscosmos publishes satellite photographs of the summit venue and the very ‘decision centers’ that support Ukrainian nationalists.”
The posting included Russian satellite pictures of the summit venue in Madrid, the Pentagon, the White House in Washington, British government buildings in central London, the German Chancellery and Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, NATO headquarters in Brussels, and the French president’s residence and other government buildings in Paris.
“At the same time, we are giving the coordinates of the objects,” Rogozin added. “Just in case.”
The coordinates, expressed as degrees of latitude and longitude, are freely available.
Britain’s defense minister said the country must bolster defense investment to tackle purported threats not only from Russia but from China and other countries.
Setting out a stark view of the risks facing Britain, defense minister Ben Wallace called for more funding, a plea that was amplified by army chief Patrick Sanders with his warning that President Vladimir Putin’s Russia would probably prove an even greater threat after the war in Ukraine.
“We’re not at war, but we must act rapidly so that we aren’t drawn into one through a failure to contain territorial expansion,” Sanders said, as he compared Britain’s situation to the build up to World War Two.
Britain has been a vocal supporter of Ukraine since Russia launched the war on Feb. 24 and Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is facing criticism at home on a range of issues, has travelled twice to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“I’ve always said that as the threat changes, so must the funding,” Wallace told a conference organized by the Royal United Services Institute, a defense and security think-tank.
Wallace has urged Johnson to increase Britain’s defense budget to 2.5% of gross domestic product by 2028, Talk TV reported, but the prime minister, keenly aware of a cost-of-living crisis, told reporters it had already been increased.
“When it comes to UK defense spending, clearly, we have to respond to the way the threats continue to change, but don’t forget ... we’ve now got a defense budget that’s 24 billion pounds bigger,” Johnson said, referring to previous spending increases.
His spokesman said Britain had already announced the “largest increase in defense spending since the Cold War”.
NATO estimates that Britain will spend 2.12% of GDP in 2022, down from an estimated 2.26 in 2021 though still above the 2% threshold the Atlantic alliance asks its members to meet.
Sanders, who became chief of the general staff this month, told the same conference the army must be ready to fight to “avert conflict”, in what appeared to be an appeal for modernization and possibly further defense spending.
Johnson on Tuesday said he did not think Britain would end up at war with Russia.
Asked if Britain was preparing for war with Russia, he told reporters at the G7 summit: “I don’t think it will come to that and clearly we’re working very hard to make sure that we confine this to Ukraine.