A day after a drone strike in Moscow, Kremlin officials jumped on the refusal of Ukrainian allies to criticize the attack as proof that Russia’s real war is with the West.
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said that Russia “prefers to hear at least a few words of condemnation” from Western capitals.
“We will calmly and deliberately think about how to deal with it,” he said.
While none of Ukraine’s allies have endorsed the drone attack, Britain’s foreign secretary said Tuesday that Kyiv has “the right to project force beyond its borders .”
The US response was more cautious, but it stopped short of criticizing the first military strike to hit civilian areas in the Russian capital since the start of the war. Ukrainian officials said they were not “directly involved” in the drone strike.
From the beginning of the conflict, Russia has described the invasion of Ukraine as a defensive war provoked by the West, and on Wednesday it was seized with an attack.
Dmitri A. Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s national security council and former president, SAYS Britain is “de facto leading an undeclared war against Russia” by giving Ukraine military aid and calling it “our eternal enemy.”
Known since the start of the war for seizing extreme positions, Mr. Medvedev argued that now any British official “can be considered a legitimate military target.”
Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, called the US refusal to condemn the attack “an encouragement for terrorists in Ukraine,” his embassy said on the Telegram messaging app.
Russia has repeatedly hit civilian areas in Ukraine over the course of the war, although it has denied targeting non-military areas. And in recent weeks it has turned into a barrage of missiles and drone attacks aimed at Kyiv, the capital. Thousands of Ukrainian civilians, including children, have been killed by Russian airstrikes and artillery bombardment, UN officials say.
Although Tuesday’s drone strike was unusual, it was not the first on Russian soil since the war began. The drones hit military air bases inside Russia, as well as an oil facility near an airfield in Kursk province. And this month, drones bombed the Kremlin.
The raids continued on Wednesday, when, Russian authorities said, Ukrainian drones attacked two oil refineries in the Krasnodar region. They also said that four people were wounded in the shooting in the border region of Belgorod.
Russia has long accused the West of waging a proxy war against it. The claims intensified this month when a group of members of the Russian paramilitary based in Ukraine conducted a multiday raid in Russia’s Belgorod border region – apparently with US armored vehicles.
A New York Times analysis found that at least three of what appeared to be American-made MRAPs were part of the attack. A leader of one of the groups claimed that the weapons were not supplied to the Ukrainian military.
Russian officials say NATO’s decision to send in weapons, which have escalated as the war continues, raises the risk of a direct confrontation and a potential nuclear war.
On Tuesday, President Vladimir V. Putin also made an oblique reference to this threat, calling the drone strike in Moscow an attempt “to make a response reaction from Russia.” He accused unspecified forces of trying to sabotage a nuclear plant in Ukraine occupied by Russia or to use “some kind of a dirty bomb related to the nuclear industry.”
Although Western governments initially focused their military support for Ukraine on strengthening its defenses, over time, the desire to hasten the end of the war led to increased deliveries of offensive weapons. to Kyiv.
Tensions between Moscow and Western capitals have escalated since the invasion, as have economic sanctions imposed on Russia as punishment.
At a security conference Wednesday in Slovakia, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said Western allies must provide Ukraine with “tangible and credible” security guarantees in its fight against Russia.
“If we want a reliable, stable peace, if we want to hold our own against Russia, if we want to be reliable to the Ukrainians, we must give Ukraine the means to prevent any bag “new aggression and include Ukraine in any new security architecture,” he said in a speech.
Mr. Macron was criticized early in the war for his insistence on not antagonizing Russia, but his approach to Mr. Putin has hardened. He also expressed regret that France and other Western European countries failed to heed warnings from countries in the eastern part of the European Union about the conflict with Russia.
On Wednesday, Germany said it had ordered four of Russia’s five consulates in the country to close after Moscow limited the number of German diplomatic staff allowed into Russia, the latest in an escalating diplomatic row between the two countries.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has been told to begin closing its consulates in Germany immediately and finish by the end of the year, said Christofer Burger, a spokesman for Germany’s Foreign Ministry.
A Russian Consulate and the Russian Embassy in Berlin will be allowed to remain open.
In Sweden, the US secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken met with European officials on Wednesday to discuss trade and technology issues, suppressing exports that help Russia.
On Thursday, Mr. Blinken was scheduled to meet with NATO foreign ministers to discuss the alliance’s summit planned for July, as well as the war in Ukraine and the prospects for the Swedish alliance member.
Christopher F. Schuetze, Michael Crowley and Aurelien Breeden contributed to the report.
