Ukraine has used U.S.-made long-range Atacms missiles to hit a military target inside Russia for the first time since the Joe Biden administration lifted restrictions on their use, according to Ukrainian officials.
Missiles fired by the Army Tactical Missile System, or Atacms, hit the town of Karachev in Russia’s Bryansk region on Tuesday, officials said. hit a large weapons cache nearby, more than 115 kilometers from the border with Ukraine.
The depot is 190 kilometers north of the front line in the neighboring Kursk region, where Russian forces are trying to drive out Ukrainian troops who seized nearly 600 square kilometers of territory after their surprise incursion in August.
The attacks come on the 1,000th day of the Kremlin’s all-out invasion of Ukraine. Kiev has been asking Washington for more than a year for permission to use Western-supplied long-range weapons to target military targets inside Russia.
President Biden’s decision to lift restrictions on their use marked a major shift in U.S. policy before President-elect Donald Trump returned to power in January, promising to quickly end the war in Ukraine without declaring. How will they do that? .
The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that its territory had been attacked, but said its air defense system had intercepted five of six Atacms in the Bryansk region. Missiles shot down.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy declined to confirm whether the Atakums were used to attack the Russian depot but said Kiev’s arsenal included a variety of long-range weapons. “We’re going to use them all,” he said during a press conference.
Videos circulating on Telegram showed a military facility in flames and smoke trailing into the sky above it.
“Without the Americans, it is impossible to use these high-tech missiles,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in comments quoted by Reuters. He also noted recent changes in Russia’s nuclear doctrine on Tuesday that lower the threshold for first use.
A video posted by Ukrainian blogger Ihor Lachenkov, who has close ties to Ukraine’s armed forces, purports to show the launch of two Atacms missiles.
“The first stars have taken off; the sky looks beautiful when Russian ammunition depots explode,” Lachenkov said in a comment accompanying the video.
People familiar with Biden’s decision said the U.S. president authorized the limited use of Atacoms inside Russia, adding that their use was more likely to help Ukraine’s operation in the Kursk region.
Russia has amassed a force of 50,000 troops in Kursk, including 10,000 North Korean troops sent by Pyongyang armed with heavy artillery and rocket systems, expected to try to evacuate the Ukrainians. Before the operation.
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Andriy Kovalenko, an official of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, wrote on Telegram that ammunition for artillery, glide bombs, anti-aircraft missiles and weapons systems in the Karachev arsenal was supplied by North Korea.
He said the depot supported Russian operations, particularly in the Kursk region.
Addressing. PBS News Hour On Monday, US National Security Adviser Jack Sullivan refused to confirm that Biden had authorized Kiev to use Atacms. But said he would “point out, however, for context . . . that Russia is currently engaged in a massive escalation of this war.”
“They have brought a foreign army, North Korea, North Korean soldiers to the front lines of the war, and that represents a sea change in the nature of this conflict,” he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Tuesday that narrowed Moscow’s potential range of nuclear weapons to include attacks by advanced Western weapons such as Atacms.
The updated doctrine contains several clear caveats aimed at dissuading Ukraine’s allies, particularly the United States, from attacking Kiev with advanced Western weapons, including cruise missiles, airstrikes and drones, on mainland Russia.
Putin has previously said that such a move would essentially mean that NATO countries are directly at war with Russia.
The latest theory says that if Russia were attacked by a non-nuclear state backed by a nuclear power – an apparent reference to the US, UK and France – it would be considered a joint attack.
It added that an attack on one member of the military alliance would be tantamount to an attack on the entire alliance, and an attack on Moscow’s ally Belarus would be considered tantamount to an attack on Russia itself.
Putin has repeatedly threatened to use Russia’s nuclear deterrent against Ukraine or its Western allies during the war, though he has never said when, how or against whom he might strike. is
“Russia could retaliate with WMD against Kiev and key NATO installations, wherever they are,” Dmitry Medvedev, a former stand-in president for Putin, posted on X. “That means World War III.”
Responding to Russia’s latest nuclear ambitions, EU chief diplomat Josep Borrell said on Tuesday: “This is not the first time they have threatened nuclear escalation, which is completely irresponsible.”
Cartography by Steven Barnard.
