Former US Congressman Ron Paul has highlighted tremendous pressure on Moscow to retaliate against the United States following Sunday’s ATACMS missile strike on a beach near Sevastopol, which resulted in civilian casualties and widespread injuries. The incident involved the use of cluster munitions from a US-supplied missile launched by Ukrainian forces, killing at least five civilians, including two children, and injuring more than 150 people.
Paul described the attack as “a Ukrainian and American attack on Russia” during Monday’s Ron Paul Liberty Report and predicted that some form of escalation is inevitable due to the US supplying long-range missiles to Ukraine and allowing their use for strikes deep inside Russian territory. He questioned, “What’s Russia going to do about this? Are they going to twiddle their thumbs and walk away? They might – for a day or two – ponder it, but there will be something that they’re going to do.
Moscow has warned that such actions would not go unanswered. Russian officials have demanded retaliation against the US, with the Kremlin describing Sunday’s beach bombing as an act of terrorism for which both the US and Ukraine are responsible. This incident occurred while a US drone loitered over the Black Sea, with ATACMS launches relying on targeting and intelligence provided by American forces.
Former Congressman Paul and his co-host Daniel McAdams speculated that this missile attack may have been a deliberate escalation designed to provoke a Russian reaction, which would then justify further NATO involvement inside Ukraine. They quoted Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s condemnation of the attack as an action the US military should not be participating in.
The only border our American military should be defending is our own border,” Greene wrote on Twitter. Ron Paul, a physician-turned-politician, served in Congress for 23 years and ran for president three times, before founding the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity upon his retirement from politics.