Moscow warns US on allowing Ukraine to hit nation with longer-range weapons

The Kremlin warned on Monday that President Joe Biden's decision to let Ukraine strike targets inside Russia with US-supplied longer-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 the 1,000-day milestone since Russia began its full-scale invasion in 2022.

It also came as a Russian ballistic missile with cluster munitions struck a residential area of 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 injuring 43, Ukraine's Interior Ministry said.

 

Washington is easing limits on what Ukraine can strike with its American-made Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMs, US officials told AP on Sunday, after months of ruling out such a move over fears of escalating the conflict and bringing about 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 been talking about this, to continue adding fuel to the fire and provoking further escalation of tensions around this conflict," spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

The scope of the new firing guidelines isn't clear. But the change came after the US, South Korea and Nato said North Korean troops are in Russia and apparently are being deployed to help Moscow drive Ukrainian troops from Russia's Kursk border region.

Biden's decision almost entirely was triggered by North Korea's entry into the fight, according to a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, and was made just before he left for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru.

Russia also is slowly pushing Ukraine's outnumbered army backward in the eastern Donetsk region. It has also conducted a devastating aerial campaign against civilian areas in Ukraine. 

Peskov referred journalists to a statement from President Vladimir Putin in September in which he said allowing Ukraine to target Russia would significantly raise the stakes.

It would change "the very nature of the conflict dramatically", Putin said at the time. "This will mean that Nato countries -- the US and European countries -- are at war with Russia."  Peskov claimed that Western countries supplying longer-range weapons also provide targeting services to Kyiv. "This fundamentally changes the modality of their involvement in the conflict," he said.

Biden's move will "mean the direct involvement of the US 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 January 20, has raised uncertainty about whether his administration would continue military support to Ukraine. He has also vowed to end the war quickly.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a muted response on Sunday to the approval that he and his government have been requesting for over 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 on Monday ahead of a UN Security Council meeting marking the 1,000th-day milestone.

Asked whether the UK would follow the US in authorising use of its longer-range missiles, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who chaired the meeting, declined to comment. He said doing so would risk "operational security and can only play into the hands of Putin".

Consequences of the new policy are uncertain. ATACMS, which have a range of about 300 kilometres, can reach far behind the about 1,000-kilometre front line in Ukraine, but they have relatively short range compared with other types of ballistic and cruise missiles.

The policy change came "too late to have a major strategic effect", said Patrick Bury, a senior associate professor in security at the University of Bath in the UK.

On a political level, the move "is a boost to the Ukrainians and it gives them a window of opportunity to try and show that they are still viable and worth supporting" as Trump prepares to take office, said Matthew Savill, director of Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

Russian lawmakers and state media bashed the West for what they called an escalatory step, threatening a harsh response.

"Biden, apparently, decided to end his presidential term 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 in the upper house of parliament, called it "a very big step toward the start of World War III" and an attempt to "reduce the degree of freedom for Trump".

Russian newspapers offered similar predictions of doom.

Some Nato allies welcomed the move.

President Andrzej Duda of Poland, which borders Ukraine, praised the decision as a "very important, maybe even a breakthrough moment" in the war.

Easing restrictions on Ukraine was "a good thing", said Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna of Russian neighbour Estonia.

But Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, known for his pro-Russian views, described Biden's decision as "an unprecedented escalation" that would prolong the war.