Kiev Aims to Create Ballistic Missiles Capable of Reaching Urals, Roscosmos Head Says

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Kiev wants to create ballistic missile systems that have the ability to strike deep into Russian territory and Ukraine has the potential for this, Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Roscosmos state corporation, said on Saturday.

"They [Ukraine] have legendary factories in Dnepropetrovsk, Yuzhnoye Design Bureau and Yuzhmashzavod. There is enormous potential there. Now their goal is to create their own ballistic systems, which will have a real ability to strike our territory," Rogozin told the Soloviev Live YouTube show.

He noted that it would not be difficult for any team of engineers to increase the range of the Grom complex already operating in Ukraine.

"This is a real threat to Russia right up to the Urals," he said.

Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin commented on Ukrainian statements about the possibility of reconsidering its renunciation of nuclear weapons. On Thursday in a televised address, Putin said that Russia will not allow Ukraine to acquire nuclear weapons. The development of even tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine would mean a strategic threat to the Russian Federation, according to the president.

He noted that the radical nationalist forces in the country aspire to produce and stockpile nuclear weapons. Moreover, Putin added that Ukraine still has a fairly wide range of know-how in the field of nuclear weapons development left over from the Soviet era.

Prior to that, during a speech at the Munich Conference on February 20, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Kiev could reconsider the renunciation of nuclear weapons provided for in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994.