“Russians on Kremlin State TV yesterday declared that Mexico was their military ally and they are wanting to place their missiles on Mexican territory so Mexico can attack the United States,” Jake Broe, a former U.S. Air Force nuclear and missile operations officer, stated on X Sunday. “This is insane*.”
Days prior to this, Russian media pundits suggested Moscow should deploy nuclear-capable ballistic missiles in the Caribbean in response to NATO countries giving Kiev the greenlight to attack inside Russian territory using Western-supplied weapons. Is it so “insane*” that this would be threatened? Or would it be a natural reaction for any country at a time enemy missiles are deployed right up against their borders?
The channel’s program, called “60 Minutes”, was specifically addressing NATO escalation in not only handing over to Kiev more and more long-range weapons, including soon to be delivered F-16 fighter jets, but also in reaction to Western capitals appearing to now positively encourage increased attacks on Russian soil.
The show hosts also questioned the authenticity of the White House having imposed ‘limits’ on how deep into Russian territory US-supplied weapons can go. President Biden while in France last week told ABC that it doesn’t mean Ukraine can attack Moscow:
In a monologue, host Evgeny Popov referred to comments by President Joe Biden that U.S. permission for Kyiv to use weapons to hit Russia did not mean that they could be used to hit Moscow or any government buildings.
Popov concluded that by merely mentioning this, Biden showed that “these thoughts do exist somewhere at the back of his mind.”
In the same segment, co-anchor Olga Skabeeva speculated that one “asymmetric” response from Moscow would be to position missiles “to those nations that are willing to strike our enemies.”
She then listed off allies like Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, describing further that a “more traditional” option would “obviously be a nuclear strike as soon as we see an existential threat to our country.”
President Putin in his recent comments before the St. Petersburg annual economic forum said that the moment has not been reached which warrants the nuclear option, and expressed hope for de-escalation with the West. But he did last week threaten to supply advanced weapons to countries deemed “enemies of the West” in retaliation for NATO escalation in Ukraine.
As for Mexico, which just saw leftist President Claudia Sheinbaum come to power on a platform vowing the continuation of predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s policies, it has adopted an official policy of neutrality while also refusing to back US-led sanctions on Moscow. However, Mexico has in the past generally condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
