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NATO’s “game-changing” support from the West has sparked a furious backlash in the Kremlin, Stefano Sannino, secretary general of the European Union’s European External Action Service told a press conference in Japan. Mr Sannino warned that Putin could now look to escalate attacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine in response to Western support.

Mr Sannino told the press conference: “I think that this latest development in terms of armed supply is just an evolution of the situation and of the way Russia started moving the war into a different stage.”

He said German and US tank provisions are meant to help Ukrainians defend themselves in the war, rather than making them attackers.

“I think that this latest development in terms of armed supply is just an evolution of the situation and of the way Russia started moving the war into a different stage,” Sannino said. He added that Russia is making “indiscriminate attacks” on civilians and cities and no longer military targets.

The EU is not moving the war into a different stage but is “just giving the possibility of saving lives and allowing the Ukrainians to defend (themselves) from these barbaric attacks,” Sannino said.

It comes after Germany and the United States upped the ante in Russia’s 11-month war by promising Wednesday to send high-tech battle tanks to Ukraine and green-lighting other allies to do the same.

Along with Germany and the US, Britain, Poland, the Netherlands, and Sweden are among the nations that have sent or announced plans to supply hundreds of tanks and heavy armored vehicles to fortify Ukraine as it enters a new phase of the war and tries to break through entrenched Russian lines.

Gian Gentile, a US Army veteran and senior historian with the Rand think tank, said the M1 Abrams and the Leopards would give Ukraine a “mechanized armored punching force.”

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