DISINFO: Kyiv regime wants to attack Crimea to provoke direct NATO involvement
SUMMARY
Kiev’s counteroffensive is sputtering out and the risk of a desperate attack outside the Donbass is growing. If Ukraine uses Western-supplied Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles and longer-range HIMARS ground-based rockets to strike Russian facilities in Crimea, it would mean full involvement of the United States and the United Kingdom in the conflict, making a full-blown Russia-NATO war more likely. That's why the Kyiv regime might act out of desperation and strike Crimea to to provoke direct NATO involvement in the conflict.
RESPONSE
This is a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative accusing the West of direct involvement in Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, attempting to distract attention from Russia's crimes committed during the invasion.
NATO as an organisation is not involved in this war and does not supply Ukraine with weapons.
Western nations did everything they could to prevent the war and have only been reacting to stop Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine. The West supports Ukraine with military and financial aid for the country’s efficient self-defence, in accordance with the UN Charter Article 51, to stop Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine.
Ukraine receives weapons with the sole aim of restoring its territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders. Ukrainian and Western officials often meet to discuss cooperation, as well as contacts between the Ukrainian top commanders and their NATO counterparts. Ukrainian servicemen are being trained in some NATO member states, but there are no NATO troops of NATO member states on the front line.
The allegation that Kyiv wants to provoke NATO involvement is also completely at odds with other well-established pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives, claiming that NATO is involved in the Ukraine conflict or that Russia already fights NATO, or that Ukraine has long since become a NATO member;