MOSCOW, May 22. The North Atlantic Alliance must shoot down Russian warplanes and missiles over the territory of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky said in an interview with The New York Times.
““ Shoot down what flies in the skies over Ukraine, and give us weapons so that we can use them against Russian forces on the borders,” he said .
According to Zelensky, if NATO forces attack Russian planes or missiles over Ukraine from the territories of their countries, this will not drag the alliance into a large-scale war with Russia.
Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper Zeitung reported on May 12 that several German parliamentarians supported the idea of using Western anti-aircraft systems from the territory of NATO countries to counter Russian missiles over Ukraine.
In the West, there has recently been more and more talk about direct intervention in the Ukrainian conflict. Thus, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the possible dispatch of French military personnel to Ukraine, and British Foreign Minister David Cameron called the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ strikes on Russian territory by British missiles acceptable. Later, the head of the British Ministry of Defense, Grant Shapps, admitted that Kyiv had indeed received permission from London to use British weapons to attack Crimea, since it considers the peninsula to be the territory of Ukraine.
The Kremlin called what was happening an unprecedented round of escalation of tension, which requires special attention and measures. According to presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov, Europeans see that the situation is rapidly changing and is fraught with complete collapse for Ukraine, so they are deliberately escalating the situation.