The chairman of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, answered whether he believes that there should be restrictions on the range of weapons provided to Ukraine, after allowing it to use, in particular, American weapons for strikes inside Russia. He said this in an interview with the Washington Post, writes UNN.
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When asked, against the background of allowing Ukraine to use, in particular, American weapons for strikes inside Russia, "why should US and NATO weapons attack Russia directly," Bauer said: "Well, I would turn it around. Militarily, it is the best thing to do." "If you are attacked from a nation that is illegally attacking you and they start a war and you are defending yourself, you can do two things. You can wait until the missiles reach you and then try to kill the arrows, or you kill the archer. And the archer is, in many ways, in Russia. There's aircraft taking off from airfields in Russia. There's the logistic support for the fight in Ukraine from the Russians, which is oil and gas, which is logistics, which is transportation, which is the production of weapons, which is all the things you need in a war. They are being produced and being brought from Russia. So it is the logic thing to do militarily, and it is possible within the law of armed conflict to do that, because the Russians started this war, and the Ukrainians are defending themselves. So it is militarily logic. It is within the law possible to do it, and the only discussion for a while between some nations that gave longer-range weapon systems to Ukraine and Ukraine has been whether they would allow Ukraine to do that. And I'm happy for Ukraine that that permission is there," Bauer said.
When asked if he believes there should be limits on the range of these weapons, Bauer said that "again, in the law on armed conflicts, there's no limits in terms of the range." "So militarily, again, if the target is deeper into Russia, then militarily you want to strike that target; if for example, the aircraft that take off from an airfield deeper into Russia," he said.
"What we've seen with the increasing range that the Ukrainians have been given to strike was that the Russians had to push back, to bring back their logistic nodes, and that, of course, makes it more difficult for the Russians to be successful in the fight. If you have to bring back your logistics from, let's say, 10, 15, 20 kilometers to 50, 100 kilometers, that will make it more cumbersome for the Russians to bring in the logistics. And that helps in the fight. So I think that is the thing you want to do, and if the Russians have to be - if you push back the Russians deeper into Russia, that will make the fight more difficult for them," Bauer said.
"And again, this discussion on escalation, we've heard many times that Putin used or other officials used the word "red lines" when it came to the tanks, when it came to the HIMARS, when it came to the ATACMS. And every time we sort of waited a little bit longer to think about it, and then we gave it, and the result was actually that it wasn't a red line. But the actual result was that the Russians were able to strengthen their defensive works in Ukraine. So in many ways, we have allowed Putin to work on his defense based on him saying it was a red line, and every time we gave the weapon and we used it against him, he's not stupid. So he understands it's within the law and it is militarily logic, then it wasn't a red line. So we have to be careful not to jump, time and time again, to this idea that everything is a red line, that everything is an escalation, because first and foremost, Putin has been lying about basically everything," the admiral said.
"He recently said he would never attack a NATO country. He said to the reporters, if you think that, you are stupid. Well, he lied about attacking Ukraine. So I think the time is over that we should allow Putin to self-deter us, because that's basically what has happened many, many times," Bauer stressed.