Russia warned that President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to hit targets inside Russia with U.S.-supplied longer-range missiles adds “fuel to the fire” of the war and would escalate international strains even higher. Biden’s change in policy added an uneasy, new factor to the dispute on the eve of the 1,000-day milestone since Russia started its full-scale invasion in 2022.
It also came as a Russian ballistic missile with cluster munitions hit a residential area of Sumy in northern Ukraine, slaying 11 people and wounding 84 others. Another missile barrage flared apartment fires in the southern port of Odesa, destroying at least 10 people and injuring 43, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry stated. Washington is reducing limits on what Ukraine can hit with its American-made Army Tactical Missile System or ATACMs, U.S. officials said, after months of ruling out such action over fears of escalating the dispute and bringing about a confrontation between Russia and NATO.
The Kremlin was quick in its denunciation.
“It is obvious that the outgoing administration in Washington intends to take steps, and they have been talking about this, to continue adding fuel to the fire and provoking further escalation of tensions around this conflict,”
spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed.
The size of the new firing policies isn’t clear. But the shift came after the U.S., South Korea and NATO stated North Korean troops are in Russia and are being deployed to support Moscow, driving Ukrainian troops from Russia’s Kursk border area. Biden’s decision almost entirely was initiated by North Korea’s entry into the fight.
Further, Russia is also slowly driving Ukraine’s outnumbered army backwards in the eastern Donetsk area. It has also executed a devastating aerial drive against civilian areas in Ukraine. It would transform the very nature of the battle dramatically. This will indicate that NATO countries—the US and European nations—are at war with Russia. Western nations supplying longer-range weapons also deliver targeting services to Kyiv. This fundamentally alters the modality of their engagement in the conflict.
Putin cautioned in June that Moscow could supply longer-range weapons to others to strike Western targets if NATO permitted Ukraine to use its allies’ arms to strike Russian territory. After signing an accord with North Korea, Putin issued an unambiguous threat to provide weapons to Pyongyang, citing Moscow could mirror Western ideas that it’s up to Ukraine to determine how to use them.
