Putin has laid out many red lines about Ukraine – are long-range missiles targeting Russia the last one?

Military leaders, Ukrainian officials and Putin critics are among those to tell Andy Gregory and Askold Krushelnycky that the West cannot buckle in support of Kyiv. But the risk involved mean his threats cannot be completely ignored

Russia's President Vladimir Putin (via Reuters)

The West cannot back down from supportng Ukraine with long-range missiles to use on targets deep inside Russia despite Vladimir Putin’s fresh threats of possible war with Nato, Kremlin critics, military leaders and Ukrainian officials have toldThe Independent.

The Russian president would regret a direct confrontation with the alliance, Kremlin critics said, but senior military figures have warned that due to the unpredictable nature of the Russian president and the “immense risks” involved, his threats “can’t be dismissed out of hand”.

With prime minister Keir Starmer in Washington to meet Presiddent Biden, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said it is “difficult to repeatedly hear” Western allies say they are “working on” a decision permit the use of long-range missiles into Russia while “Putin continues to burn down our cities and villages”.

Zelensky has been calling for the US and UK to agree to allow them to strike infrastructure such as airfields that contribute to the barrages of missiles and drones that strike across Ukraine on a near-daily basis.

The president wrote on X on Friday: “Putin interprets delays in helping us and in making strong decisions for Ukraine as permission to do whatever he wants.”

Prominent Putin critic Sir Bill Browder told The Independent: “[Putin’s] psychology is one where he’s provoked by weakness, not by strength, and the only way to deal with Russia is to put a boot on the throat.

“This is all bluster, as far as I can see. Good luck to him if he wants to go to war with Nato. He would lose that war in a matter of days.”

A live test of a US long-range missile (AP)

Describing Putin’s talk of “red lines” which the West should not cross as “complete nonsense”, Sir Bill added: “It would be a disaster for Ukraine if we buckle at the last minute. What it shows is that we’re appeasing a dictator, and we all know where appeasement gets you.”

With growing anticipation that Ukraine’s pleas to use Western weapons could be granted this weekend, Admiral Lord West, the former head of the Royal Navy, also warned against backing down “after all this hype”.

“Because the message it would give to Putin is: ‘ah they do have to obey my red lines’ – and that’s a bad message,” Lord West said.

But he added: “We’re talking here about risks that are immense, just immense risks, and people have got to think very carefully, sensibly and in a calm way about these and need to think about all reactions if certain things happen. And I’m not sure always that’s the case.

“Being gung-ho about major wars between say Russia and Nato – that is not clever.”

John Foreman, who served as UK defence attaché in Moscow from 2019 to 2022: added: “We don’t have great insight to Putin’s decision making ... nor can we reliably predict how he will actually react.

“This plus Russia’s skewed threat perceptions and the lack of diplomatic channels has raised US concerns about risk of unintended escalation. These can’t be dismissed out of hand or wished away.”

Ukrainian troops in eastern Ukraine (Reuters)

Oleksandr Vasiuk, MP for the partly Russian-occupied Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhia, warned that Moscow is now actively moving its miltary assets – frequently used to strike Ukraine – deeper into Russian territory to evade Kyiv’s forces.

“Any delay or prohibition on the use of long-range Western missiles only complicates the situation for Ukrainian forces,” said Vasiuk, adding that Ukraine is not aiming to escalate the war but to prevent further shelling of Ukrainian cities and protect civilians.

An adviser to the Ukrainian presidential administration, who preferred not to be named, told The Independent that Kyiv had long been using Ukrainian-manufactured weapons to strike military bases and oil refineries deep inside Russia, while using Western weapons to hit Ukrainian regions Putin now claims are part of Russia.

“So, according to their logic, we and the West have already crossed that ‘red line’ despite all their previous threats to retaliate against the West. They didn’t then and they will not now,” said the aide, adding that he doubted “even a demented Putin” would seriously countenance a war with Nato.

Mark Galeotti, the author of a number of books on Putin, concurred that the Russian president is “not about to pick a fight with the largest and most powerful military alliance in the world”, saying: “Essentially [Putin’s] main weapon is precisely high flown rhetoric in the hope that they can somehow intimidate or deter.”

Likening Putin to the “boy who cried wolf” in having issued previous threats, such as over the Western supply of F-16 fighter jets and British battle tanks since used in Kursk, “and nothing especially substantial has happened”, Galeotti said: “The trouble is that doesn’t necessarily mean that nothing ever would.”

A Storm Shadow cruise missile is on display during the Paris Air Show (AP)

He added: “I think really the true red lines are presence of Nato combat troops in Ukraine or any attempt to seriously drive the Russians out of Crimea. I think if it’s anything else, these red lines actually turn out to be more of a sprightly pink.”

Professor Sam Greene, of the Centre for European Policy Analysis think tank, suggested the only person who will truly know whether a red line has been crossed will be Putin, adding: “The reality right now is that Putin himself probably does’t know.”

While “Putin is trying to communicate that there can be potentially unpredictable consequences”, he “doesn’t know what level of verbal threat will be effective” and “escalation is just as unpredictable for him as it is for everybody else”, said Greene.

The true fear from the perspective of Western policymakers has not been of crossing a red line, but of failing to prepare the Kremlin for their plans – leading to the US and allies to delay support for Ukraine, Greene suggested.

Ukraine’s allies fear sparking “some catastrophic shift in Russia’s military fortunes or Putin’s perception of the war or his own power, that forces him to believe he’s in a now or never moment, that either he pulls out all the stops or he loses everything including probably his life or freedom”, said Greene.

He added: “So avoiding World War 3 may also come at the cost of Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. But that’s the calculation that Western governments have been making – and appear to be making in this instance as well.”

Agreeing with this analysis, Galeotti said: “Putin does not make tough decisions quickly or easily, and when forced into making a quick decision he tends to overcompensate and frankly panic.

“And the last thing anyone wants to do is panic him – because that’s precisely when he might do something particularly dangerous or stupid.”