The Kremlin said Washington had been “reckless, dangerous” to give Kyiv clearance to hit Russian territory with US-supplied long-range missiles, as rocket strikes by Moscow’s military killed and injured scores of people in Ukrainian cities.
With barely two months left in office, US president Joe Biden lifted restrictions preventing Ukraine from firing Atacms ballistic missiles, with a range of about 300km, at military targets inside Russia. Kyiv is expected to use them in support of its troops in Russia’s border region of Kursk, where they are trying to hold on to hundreds of square kilometres of land in the face of attacks by Russian and North Korean soldiers.
“This decision is reckless, dangerous, aimed at a qualitative change, a qualitative increase in the level of involvement of the United States in this conflict,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.
“If such a decision was really formulated … then, of course, this is a qualitatively new round of tension and a qualitatively new situation from the point of view of US involvement in this conflict,” he added, accusing Mr Biden of “adding fuel to the fire and continuing to provoke tension around this conflict”.”
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The US had long rejected Ukrainian requests to lift its restrictions on the use of Atacms due to fears of “escalating” Europe’s biggest war since 1945, and amid Kremlin warnings that western states would become direct parties to the conflict if they allowed long-range weapons that they supplied to be used to hit targets deep inside Russia.
“Targeting and other services are not performed by Ukrainian military personnel, but by military specialists from western countries. This radically changes the modality of their involvement in the Ukrainian conflict. This is where the danger and provocativeness of this situation lies,” Mr Peskov claimed, pledging that Russia would deliver “a proper response”. He did not make clear what this response would entail.
Ukraine did not explicitly confirm Mr Biden’s policy change, but its president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said: “Strikes are not carried out with words. Such things are not announced. The rockets will speak for themselves.”
Kyiv hopes the US move will prompt the UK and France to allow it to use cruise missiles that they supply – called Storm Shadow and Scalp, respectively - to hit targets deeper inside Russia, but they declined to comment on that prospect on Monday.
US, South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence services say at Pyongyang has sent at least 10,000 troops to bolster Russia’s forces and that clashes have already taken place between North Korean and Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk region, where Kyiv’s military seized territory in a surprise attack in August.
They are trying to hold on to the area at least until Donald Trump returns to the White House in January, when it could be a useful “bargaining chip” in the kind of talks that he may try to broker between Kyiv and Moscow. Mr Trump has said he knows how to end the all-out war – which reaches 1,000 days on Tuesday – within 24 hours.
Shortly after news emerged of Mr Biden’s decision on Sunday night, a Russian missile hit an apartment block in the city of Sumy in northern Ukraine, close to its border with Kursk region. At least 11 people were killed and 89 injured in the attack.
On Monday morning, a Russian ballistic missile struck a residential area in the southern city of Odesa, killing at least 10 people and wounding 47 others. Ukraine’s air force said the missile was intercepted by air defence fire and came down in a residential area of the Black Sea port.
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