Supply of Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine will neutralize one of Russia’s nuclear blackmail aspects

Maria Zolkina, political analyst at the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation, shared her opinions with Espreso TV.

"The decision on long-range missiles is strategic. The Russian side reserves nuclear blackmail as an instrument of pressure on some of our partners, and it partially works. Although our partners assess the likelihood of a nuclear strike on Ukraine as quite low, they take this threat more seriously than Kyiv," she said.

According to Zolkina, the decision on the missiles was advocated by Ukrainian experts and the Ukrainian authorities as one that would allow Ukraine to prevent the implementation of this nuclear blackmail.

"After threatening to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus, Russia can pull the same trick on ground military bases in the occupied Crimea. If Ukraine now receives enough Storm Shadow, it can target these military bases to prevent this scenario from being realized even in theory. Behind this decision of the United Kingdom is the understanding that they are not afraid of the Kremlin's threats, and on the other hand, it is a decision to anticipate possible serious actions of the Russian Federation in terms of nuclear blackmail of Ukraine and our Western allies," the analyst believes.