Moscow warns US against allowing Ukraine to hit Russian soil with long-range weapons

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Kremlin warned Monday that President Joe Biden’s decision letting Ukraine attack targets inside Russia with US-supplied long-range missiles adds ‘fuel to the fire’ of the war and would escalate international tensions even higher.

Biden’s shift in policy added an uncertain, new factor to the conflict on the eve of 1,000 day milestone since Russia began its full-scale invasion in 2022.

It also came as a Russian ballistic missile with a cluster munition hit a residential area in Sumy in northern Ukraine, killing 11 people and injuring 84 others. Another missile barrage sparked apartment fires in the southern port of Odesa, killing at least 10 people and wounding 43, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said.

Washington is relaxing the limits on what Ukraine can attack with its American-made Army Tactical Missile System or ATACMsUS officials told The Associated Press on Sunday, after months of ruling out such a move for fear of escalating the conflict and creating a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.

The Kremlin was swift in its condemnation.

“It is obvious that the outgoing administration in Washington intends to take steps, and they have talked about this, to continue to add fuel to the fire and provoke further escalation of tensions around this conflict,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Speaking further at a UN Security Council meeting marking the 1,000-day war, Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said Moscow is “astounded” that the leaders of Britain and France “are eager to play into the hands of the outgoing administration and drag not only their countries but all of Europe into large-scale escalation with drastic consequences.”

The scope of the new firing guidelines is not clear. But the change came after the US, South Korea and NATO said so North Korean troops are in Russia and apparently they are being deployed to help Moscow drive Ukrainian troops from Russia’s Kursk border region.

Biden’s decision was prompted almost entirely by North Korea’s entry into the fray, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal considerations, and was made just before he left for Economic Cooperation in Asia and the Pacific summit in Peru.

Russia is also slow push back Ukraine’s outnumbered army in the eastern Donetsk region. It has also completed a devastating air campaign against civilian areas in Ukraine.

Peskov referred reporters to a statement by President Vladimir Putin in September, in which he said it would significantly increase efforts if Ukraine were allowed to target Russia.

That would change “the nature of the conflict dramatically,” Putin said at the time. “This will mean that NATO countries – the United States and European countries – are at war with Russia.”

Peskov claimed that Western countries that provide longer-range weapons also provide targeting services to Kiev. “This fundamentally changes the modality of their involvement in the conflict,” he said.

Putin warned in June that Moscow could deliver longer range weapons to others to attack Western targets if NATO allowed Ukraine to use its allies’ weapons to attack Russian territory. After signing a treaty with North Korea, Putin issued an explicit threat to supply weapons to Pyongyang, noting that Moscow could echo Western arguments that it is up to Ukraine to decide how to use them.

“The Westerners are supplying weapons to Ukraine and saying, ‘We don’t control anything here anymore, and it doesn’t matter how they are used,'” Putin has said. “Well, we can also say: ‘We have delivered something to someone – and then we do not control anything.’ And let them think about it.”

Putin has also confirmed that Moscow is ready to use nuclear weapons if they see a threat to the country’s sovereignty.

Biden’s move will “mean direct involvement of the United States and its satellites in military action against Russia, as well as a radical change in the essence and nature of the conflict,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said.

President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on January 20, has raised uncertainty about whether his administration will continue military aid to Ukraine. He has also promised to end the war quickly.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday gave a muted response to the approval he and his government have been seeking for more than a year, adding: “The missiles will speak for themselves.”

“The longer Ukraine can strike, the shorter the war will be,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Monday ahead of the UN Security Council meeting marking the 1,000-day milestone.

Asked whether the United Kingdom would follow the United States in allowing the use of its longer-range missiles, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who chaired the meeting, declined to comment. He said it would risk “operational security and can only play into Putin’s hands.”

France’s UN Ambassador Nicolas De Riviere, whose country has also provided Ukraine with longer-range missiles, told the Security Council, without directly saying what his country would do, that “Ukraine’s right to its legitimate defense includes the ability to attack military targets involved in operations . aimed at the territory.”

Ukraine’s Sybiha said a US green light to use longer-range missiles against Russia “could be a game changer”, but others are less certain.

ATACMS, which have a range of about 300 kilometers (190 miles), can reach well behind the roughly 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) front line in Ukraine, but they have relatively short ranges compared to other types of ballistic and cruise missiles.

The policy change came “too late to have a major strategic impact,” said Patrick Bury, a senior lecturer in security at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom.

“The ultimate kind of impact it will have is probably to slow down the pace of the Russian offensives that are now taking place,” he said, adding that Ukraine could attack targets in Kursk or logistics centers or command headquarters.

Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, agreed that the US move would not change the course of the war, noting that Ukraine “would need large stockpiles of ATACMS, which it does not have and will not receive because the US own supplies are limited.”

Politically, the move is “a boost for the Ukrainians and it gives them a window of opportunity to try to show that they are still viable and worth supporting” as Trump prepares to take office, said Matthew Savill, director of military science. at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

The sign of the political change was the arrival in Russia of North Korean troops, according to Glib Voloskyi, an analyst at the CBA Initiatives Center, a Kiev-based think tank.

“This is a signal that the Biden administration is sending to North Korea and Russia, indicating that the decision to involve North Korean entities has crossed a red line,” he said.

Russian lawmakers and state media blasted the West for what they called an escalating move and threatened a harsh response.

“Biden apparently decided to end his presidency and go down in history as ‘Bloody Joe,'” lawmaker Leonid Slutsky told Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy head of the foreign affairs committee of the upper house of the parliament, called it “a very big step towards the start of World War 3” and an attempt to “reduce the degree of freedom for Trump.”

Russian newspapers offered similar predictions of doom. “The crazy people who are dragging NATO into a direct conflict with our country may soon be in great pain,” Rossiyskaya Gazeta said.

Some NATO allies welcomed the move.

President Andrzej Duda of Poland, which borders Ukraine, hailed the decision as a “very important, perhaps even a breakthrough moment” in the war.

“In recent days, we have seen the decisive intensification of Russian attacks on Ukraine, above all the missile attacks, where civilian objects are attacked, where people are killed, ordinary Ukrainians,” Duda said.

Easing restrictions on Ukraine was “a good thing,” said Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna of Russia’s neighbor Estonia.

“We have said this from the beginning – that no restrictions must be placed on the military support,” he told senior EU diplomats in Brussels. “And we have to understand that the situation is more serious (than) it was maybe even a few months ago.”

But Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, known for his pro-Russian views, described Biden’s decision as “an unprecedented escalation” that would prolong the war.

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Associated Press reporters Matthew Lee in Washington, Lorne Cook in Brussels, Danica Kirka in London, Hanna Arhirova in Kiev, Edith M. Lederer in the United Nations and Karel Janicek in Prague, Czech Republic, contributed to this report.

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