MOSCOW (Dispatches) - Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov said on Wednesday that the U.S. has been encouraging Ukraine to strike Russian territory, despite claiming the opposite.
Antonov argued that Washington’s statements in response to the recent drone raid on the Russian capital “sound like an encouragement for Ukrainian terrorists.”
“Doesn’t the U.S. administration understand that no one believes their slogans about non-support of Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory?!” the diplomat said, according to a statement on the embassy’s Telegram channel.
Antonov’s remarks came after a White House spokesperson told reporters that “as a general matter, we do not support attacks inside of Russia.” The goal of the drone attack was to “sow fear among Russians” and undermine trust in the authorities, he said.
“The Russian Federation has been sentenced to ‘capital punishment’ in the West long ago. But simply, they don’t have it in them to achieve this goal,” the ambassador stated.
Drones carrying explosives crashed into residential buildings in Moscow on Tuesday morning. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, eight UAVs were involved in the attack, and all of them were either destroyed by air defenses, or veered off course due to the use of jamming equipment. Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said that no one was killed or seriously injured.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s senior adviser, Mikhail Podoliak, denied Kiev’s involvement in the attack, but suggested that more raids would come.
On Tuesday, a U.S. military aid package for Ukraine that is expected to be announced this week will total up to $300 million and will include additional munitions for drones, U.S. officials said. The drone ammunition comes after new attacks by unmanned aircraft targeted Moscow.
There has been no suggestion that U.S.-made drones or munitions were used in the recent attacks on Moscow, and U.S. officials have repeatedly said that Ukraine has agreed not to use any American-provided weapons for attacks on Russian soil.
But the new aid package comes at a tense moment in the war. The latest drone attack on Moscow follows Russia’s seizure of the eastern Ukrainian city Bakhmut after a nine-month battle that killed tens of thousands of people.
U.S. officials did not provide details on the drone munitions in the new aid package or specify which unmanned aircraft would use them. The Defense Department has given Ukraine a variety of unmanned aircraft over the last year, for both surveillance and attacks, including at least two versions of the Switchblade, a so-called kamikaze drone that can loiter in the air and then explode into a target.