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Who is a target? Arms, red lines and Moscow talks
Summary
On 26 April 2022, Western weapons deliveries, a British statement on strikes inside Russia and a Russian warning of proxy war converged with a UN visit to Moscow.
What happens when the countries arming Ukraine begin to say how those arms may be used? That question hung over 26 April 2022, a day on which weapons policy, rhetoric and diplomacy collided.
Germany moves on heavy weapons
Germany announced the delivery of 50 ex-Bundeswehr Gepard anti-air tanks to Ukraine. It was the first heavy weaponry Germany had supplied since the start of the invasion. The announcement followed the visit of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to Kyiv on 24 April 2022, the highest-level American visit to the capital since the invasion began. There, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was informed of newly approved military assistance.
Relations between Berlin and Moscow were already strained. On 25 April 2022, Russia's foreign ministry expelled 40 German diplomatic staff, a retaliatory move after Germany expelled the same number of Russian diplomats.
London draws a line, Moscow answers
The sharper exchange concerned where Western-supplied weapons could be used. The United Kingdom's Armed Forces Secretary, James Heappey, said Ukraine could strike targets inside Russia with British weapons, calling it completely legitimate as a way to disrupt attacks on Ukraine. The Russian Defence Ministry accused the UK of provoking Ukraine into attacking Russian territory and warned of a proportional response should any attacks occur.
The warning came a day after two large fires at an oil refinery and a military depot in Bryansk, Russia, on 25 April 2022. The reports did not attribute those fires to anyone in the material from that date.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov went further. He said weapons supplied to Ukraine would be a legitimate target for Russia's military and that storage facilities in western Ukraine had been targeted. He also said NATO was, in essence, engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy, and added that war means war.
Fighting continued across Ukraine
On the ground, a Russian missile strike destroyed a strategic bridge across the Dniester Estuary in Odesa Oblast, according to Ukrainian authorities. A day earlier, regional authorities said airstrikes on Zhmerynka and Koziatyn in Vinnytsia Oblast had killed five people, and a person was killed when Russia bombed the Kremenchuk Oil Refinery in Poltava Oblast. In occupied Kherson, mayor Ihor Kolykhaiev announced on 25 April 2022 that Russian forces had taken control of the Kherson City Council.
These strikes in the west and centre of the country sat alongside Lavrov's claim about storage facilities in western Ukraine, linking the rhetoric about arms to the geography of the attacks.
Diplomacy at the same moment
UN Secretary-General António Guterres visited Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin. Before the meeting he called for a ceasefire to end the war.
What the day showed
The day set two tracks against each other. One was a steady expansion of Western military support, with Germany crossing into heavy weapons and the UK openly endorsing strikes on Russian territory with its equipment. The other was Moscow's response: threats of proportional retaliation, a declaration that supplied weapons were legitimate targets, and a framing of the conflict as a proxy war involving NATO.
Guterres's trip and his ceasefire call took place against that backdrop, on the same day Russia's top diplomat spoke of war in the plainest terms.
