President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to strike targets inside Russia with long-range missiles supplied by the United States has been met with ominous warnings from Moscow, a hint of threat from Kiev, and nods of approval from some Western allies.
Biden’s policy shift has added a new, uncertain but potentially decisive factor to the war on the eve of the 1,000th day.
News of Biden’s change came on the day a Russian ballistic missile with cluster munitions struck a residential area in Sumy, a city in northern Ukraine, killing 11 people, including two children, and wounding 84 others.
On Monday, another Russian missile attack sparked fires in two residential buildings in Odessa, southern Ukraine. District Governor Oleh Kiper said at least eight people were killed and 18 others were injured, including a child.
Washington is easing restrictions on what Ukraine can strike with U.S.-made weapons, U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Sunday, months after ruling out such a move over fears of escalating the conflict and causing a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.
The scope of the new shooting guidelines is unclear. But the change came after the United States, South Korea and NATO recently announced that North Korean forces are in Russia and are apparently being deployed to help the Russian military expel Ukrainian forces from Russia’s Kursk border region.
Russia is also slowly working to push back the outnumbered Ukrainian army in the eastern Donetsk region. It also launched a devastating and deadly air campaign against civilian areas in Ukraine.
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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday referred journalists to a statement Russian President Vladimir Putin made in September, in which he said allowing Ukraine to target Russia would significantly increase the risks in the conflict.
Putin said at the time that it would “dramatically change the nature of the conflict.” This means that NATO countries – the United States and European countries – are at war with Russia.”
Peskov claimed that Western countries that supply long-range weapons to Kyiv also provide targeting services to Kiev. “This radically changes the way they participate in the conflict,” Peskov said.
Last June, Putin warned that Russia might provide long-range weapons to others to strike Western targets in response to NATO allies allowing Ukraine to use their weapons to attack Russian territory. He also reiterated Moscow’s readiness to use nuclear weapons if it saw a threat to its sovereignty.
President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office in about two months, has raised uncertainty about whether his administration will continue the vital military support the United States provides to Ukraine. He also pledged to end the war quickly.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave a muted response to the approval he and his government requested from Biden more than a year ago.
“Today, many in the media are talking about our obtaining permission to carry out the relevant measures,” Zelensky said in his evening video address on Sunday.
“But strikes are not done with words. Such things are not announced. The missiles will speak for themselves,” he said.
Russian officials and Kremlin-backed media attacked the West for what they said was an escalatory move, and threatened a harsh response from Moscow.
“Apparently, Biden has decided to end his presidential term and will go down in history as ‘Bloody Joe,’” senior MP Leonid Slutsky told Russia’s official RIA Novosti news agency.
Senator Vladimir Dzhabarov, in statements to the official TASS news agency, described Biden’s decision as “a very big step towards the beginning of World War III.”
Russian newspapers made similar predictions of doom. “The lunatics who are dragging NATO into a direct conflict with our country may soon suffer severe pain,” the state newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta told its readers.
The Foreign Minister of NATO member Lithuania, Gabrielius Landsbergis, said he had not yet “opened the champagne” because it remained unclear exactly what restrictions had been lifted and whether Ukraine had enough US weapons to make a difference.
Margus Tsahkna, the foreign minister of Estonia, another Baltic country that fears a military threat from Russia, said easing restrictions on Ukraine was a “good thing.”
“We have said it from the beginning – that no restrictions should be placed on military support,” he said during a meeting of senior EU diplomats in Brussels. “And we need to understand that the situation is more serious than it was two months ago.”
Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed.
& Edition 2024 The Canadian Press
