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June 5 (UPI) -- President Vladimir Putin on Sunday warned that Russia will strike targets, which he did not specify, if the West supplies Ukraine with longer-range missiles. "If it now comes to rockets and they are supplied, we will draw conclusions from that and employ our weapons that we have in sufficient quantities to strike those facilities that we are not attacking so far," Putin warned in an excerpt from a wide-ranging interview with state media Rossyia 1.
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Putin said that the "additional deliveries of armaments" shows that Ukraine and the West have the "sole objective of stretching out the armed conflict as long as possible."
The Russian president was asked about an announcement made by President Joe Biden in a guest article for The New York Times last week that the U.S. would supply Ukraine with "more advanced rocket systems and munitions that will enable them to more precisely strike key targets on the battlefield in Ukraine."
Putin said that such deliveries "changes nothing" because Kyiv already had an inventory of such systems, downplaying them as comparable to Russia's rocket systems.
"There is nothing new about that," Putin said. "These are all multiple launch rocket systems and the Ukrainian army operates similar Soviet-and Russia-made Grad, Smerch and Uragan rocket systems."
In another excerpt from the interview published by the Kremlin on Friday, Putin also blamed the economic policies of the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic for the worsening global food crisis.
Putin claimed that the global food crisis did not worsen after he launched the invasion of Ukraine, which he again referred to as a "special operation."
Sergiy Haidai, head of Luhansk regional military administration, said in a statement to Telegram that Russian general Aleksandr Dvornikov has been tasked with "either completely capturing Severodonetsk or completely cutting off the Lysychansk-Bakhmut highway and taking it under control" by June 10.
The claim has not been verified by United Press International but, if true, would signify the Kremlin's disappointment with its lack of success in Ukraine.
Moscow tapped Dvornikov to lead the Russian invasion of Ukraine in April amid a reorganization to unify the military command structure and change its war tactics after failing to accomplish Russia's goals in much of Ukraine.
Until Dvornikov, who has been described as the "Butcher of Syria" and one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's favorite generals, was tapped to lead Russia's troops in Ukraine. Russian forces had been commanded from Moscow without a central leader on the battlefield.
The Russian military is suffering "eroding military professionalism" and "low morale" that "could present Ukrainian forces with opportunities," the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., has said in an analysis of the war.
Russian forces have also faced setbacks after the Ukrainian military started to move to using modern weapons that meet NATO standards and made successful bids to repel Russia troops from crossing a key river in the Donbas region west of Severodonetsk.
"The orcs believed in their lies about the capture of Severodonetsk, and did not expect such resistance -- they stood on their own rakes," Haidai said, using a derogatory term for the Russian troops. "The defense of Severodonetsk is strong! Let's hold on!"
Russian missiles on Sunday targeted the Ukraine capital Kyiv for the first time since April 29.
