Conflicts & War

Putin warns of Russian response to Western tanks in Ukraine

Moscow, Feb 2 (EFE).- President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia has “a way to respond” to the West’s decision to supply Ukraine with tanks to help Kyiv battle Russian invaders.

“Those who expect to win on the battlefield apparently do not understand that a modern war with Russia will be utterly different for them. We are not the ones sending our tanks to their borders,” he said in Volgograd during the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory in the Battle of Stalingrad,

The city’s name was changed from Stalingrad to Volgograd in 1961 in the context of de-Stalinization.

“But we have a way to respond, and it will not just end with the use of armored vehicles. Everyone should understand this,” Putin said after laying a wreath in front of The Motherland Calls, an 85 m (279 ft) statue of a woman with a raised sword.

The president said in the past that Moscow might react to what it perceives as increasing NATO involvement in Ukraine by resorting to weapons that only Russia has, apparently referring to hypersonic missiles, which the Russian military has used on several occasions since invading Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

Putin emphasized the significance of the impending arrival of German tanks in Ukraine.

“It’s incredible but it’s a fact: we are again being threatened with German Leopard tanks with crosses on them,” the Russian leader said.

“Readiness to go until the end, to do the impossible for the sake of the motherland, for the sake of truth was – and is — in the blood, in the character of our multinational people,” Putin said.

An estimated 2 million soldiers and civilians perished in the Battle of Stalingrad, which dragged on from August 1942 to Feb. 2, 1943, when Field Marshall Friedrich Paulus, commander of Germany’s 6th Army, surrendered to the Soviets.

The first major defeat of the Nazis in battle marked a turning point in World War II. EFE

mos/dr

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