Russia alleges US to blame for civilian deaths, Macron for rising tensions
Al Jazeera
Rhetoric is ramped up as Ukraine’s Zelenskyy tells French parliament ‘Europe is no longer a continent of peace’.
Russia has ramped up its rhetoric against the West, blaming the United States for Ukraine’s alleged use of US-supplied weapons against civilians on its soil and accusing France of fuelling tensions across Europe.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday that the US’s decision last week to greenlight Ukraine’s firing of US-supplied weapons into Russia amounted to “a confession … for the murder of children and women in the Belgorod region”.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed on May 31 that President Joe Biden had agreed for the first time to let Ukraine use the weapons so it could defend its northeastern Kharkiv region, which lies adjacent to Belgorod. The US still bars Ukraine from firing US-made weapons deeper into Russia.
In her comments, Zakharova said the alleged strikes had taken place last week in the Belgorod region.
“Fragments of HIMARS [rockets] will serve as direct proof,” she told reporters, without presenting images of any rocket fragments or saying how many people had been killed in the alleged incident.
