Russia says the US missile decision could raise the stakes in the Ukraine-National war
President Joe Biden's decision to allow Ukraine to strike inside Russia with US-supplied long-range ballistic missiles has been met with dire warnings from Moscow, threats from Kyiv and nods of approval from other Western countries.
Biden's policy shift has added an uncertain but significant new dimension to the war on the eve of its 1,000-day milestone.
News of Biden's turnaround came a day after a Russian missile with multiple weapons struck a residential area in Sumy, a city in northern Ukraine, killing 11 people, including two children, and injuring 84 others.
On Monday, another Russian missile attack sparked fires in two houses in Odesa, southern Ukraine. At least eight people died and 18 were injured, including a child, said Gov. By Kiper.
Washington is easing restrictions on what Ukraine can attack with US-made weapons, US officials told The Associated Press on Sunday, months after making such a decision out of fear of escalating tensions and bringing direct conflict between Russia and NATO.
The scope of the new shooting guidelines is unclear. But the change comes after the US, South Korea and NATO recently said North Korean troops are in Russia and are apparently being deployed to help Russian troops drive Ukrainian troops out of the Kursk border region.
Russia is also slowly pushing back the outnumbered Ukrainian army in the region east of Donetsk. It also carried out a brutal and deadly air campaign against Ukrainian settlements.
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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday referred reporters to a statement made by Russian President Vladimir Putin in September, in which he said allowing Ukraine to turn to Russia would greatly escalate the conflict.
It would change the “situation of the conflict significantly,” Putin said at the time. “This will mean that NATO countries – the United States and European countries – are at war with Russia.”
Peskov said that Western countries that provide remote weapons also provide targeting services to Kyiv. “This fundamentally changes the way they are involved in the conflict,” Peskov said.
Last June, Putin warned that Russia may provide remote weapons to others to attack Western territories in response to NATO allies allowing Ukraine to use their weapons to attack Russian territory. He also confirmed Moscow's readiness to use nuclear weapons if it sees a threat to its sovereignty.
President-elect Donald Trump, who has been in office for almost two months, has expressed uncertainty about whether his administration will continue significant US military support for Ukraine. He also asserted that he will quickly end the war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a quiet response to the endorsement that he and his government have been asking for from Biden for more than a year.
“Today, there is a lot of talk in the media about us getting permission for the right actions,” Zelenskyy said in his late-night speech on Sunday.
“But strikes are not done with words. Such things are not announced. The arrows will speak for themselves,” he said.
Russian officials and the Kremlin-backed media slammed the West for what they said was an escalation, and threatened a tough response from Moscow.
“Biden, apparently, decided to end his presidential term and go down in history as 'Bloody Joe',” law enforcement official Leonid Slutsky told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
Senator Vladimir Dzhabarov, commenting on the Tass news agency, called Biden's decision “a very big step towards the beginning of the third world war.”
Russian newspapers gave similar doomsday predictions. The Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta told its readers: “Madmen who are dragging NATO into direct conflict with our country and our country.
The foreign minister of NATO member Lithuania, Gabrielius Landsbergis, said he is not “opening the champagne” yet as it is not clear what restrictions have been lifted and that Ukraine has enough US weapons to make a difference.
Margus Tsahkna, the foreign minister of Estonia, another Baltic state that fears a military threat from Russia, said the easing of restrictions on Ukraine was “a good thing.”
“We have been saying it from the beginning – that no limits should be placed on military support,” he said at a meeting of the European Union's top officials in Brussels. “And we have to understand that this situation is worse (than) it was like a few months ago.”
Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed.
© 2024 The Canadian Press
