KYIV: Ukraine used US ATACMS missiles to strike Russian territory for the first time on Tuesday, Moscow said, in a major escalation on the war's 1,000th day. Russia said its forces shot down five of six missiles fired at a military facility in the Bryansk region, while debris of one hit the facility, causing no casualties or damage. Ukraine said it had struck a Russian arms depot around 110 km inside Russia and caused secondary explosions. It did not specify what weapons it had used.
President Joe Biden gave approval just this week for Ukraine to use the medium range US missiles for such attacks, which Moscow has described as an escalation that would make Washington a direct combatant in the war and prompt retaliation. It came amid plans for vigils to mark 1,000 days of war, with weary troops at the front, Kyiv besieged by airstrikes, and doubts about the future of Western support as Donald Trump heads back to the White House.
Military experts say US missiles can help Ukraine defend a pocket it has captured as a bargaining chip inside Russia but are not likely to change the course of the 33-month-old war. Potentially more consequential changes in the US posture are expected when Trump returns to power in two months, having pledged to end the war quickly without saying how.
In an address to parliament, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the war's "decisive moments" would come in the next year. "At this stage of the war, it is being decided who will prevail. Whether us over the enemy, or the enemy over us Ukrainians... and Europeans. And everyone in the world who wants to live freely and not be subject to a dictator."
Thousands of Ukrainian citizens have died, over 6 million live as refugees abroad and the population has fallen by a quarter since Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin ordered the attack by land, sea and air that began Europe's biggest conflict since World War Two.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike in response to a broader range of conventional attacks just days after the White House reportedly allowed Ukraine to fire American missiles deep into Russia. Russia has been warning the West for months that if Washington allowed Ukraine to fire US, British and French missiles deep into Russia then Moscow would consider those Nato members to be directly involved in the war in Ukraine.
The updated Russian nuclear doctrine, which sets out a framework for the conditions under which Putin could order a strike from the world's biggest nuclear arsenal, was approved by Putin on Tuesday, according to a published decree. Analysts said the biggest change was that Russia could consider a nuclear strike in response to a conventional attack on Russia or ally Belarus that "created a critical threat to their sovereignty and (or) their territorial integrity". — Reuters
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