MOSCOW—Russia said it could target U.S. commercial satellites if they are used to help Ukraine, expanding its threats of reprisals to a new theater that could hit closer to home for American interests.
Russian President
meanwhile said at a policy conference in Moscow on Thursday that his country had no intention of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, suggesting it was speculation. Mr. Putin again framed the worsening friction between Russia and the U.S. in terms of what he sees as a cultural war in which the West was trying to impose its will on the rest of the world.
“We have never said anything on our own initiative about the possible use of nuclear weapons by Russia,” he said, “but only hinted at it in response to statements made by the leaders of Western countries.”
His remarks came as tensions between Russia and the U.S. continued to build, this time after
Konstantin Vorontsov,
a senior official in Russia’s Foreign Ministry, said Wednesday that if U.S. satellites were used to aid Kyiv, they “could be a legitimate target for a retaliatory strike.”
“We would like to emphasize the extremely dangerous trend that goes beyond the harmless use of space technologies, which clearly manifested itself in the course of events in Ukraine,” Mr. Vorontsov told a meeting of the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, according to remarks published by the Foreign Ministry. “We are talking about the use by the United States and its allies of civilian infrastructure components in space, including commercial ones, in armed conflicts.”
Mr. Vorontsov, who is deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for Nonproliferation and Arms Control, didn’t name any company, but
recently pledged that his company SpaceX would continue to fund access for the Ukrainian government to its Starlink satellite-internet system.
In addition,…
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