Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike in response to a broader range of conventional attacks, as Ukraine used US long-range missiles to strike Russian territory for the first time.
The predawn attack struck an ammunition warehouse in the Bryansk region of southwestern Russia. The Russian Ministry of Defence said in a statement that Ukraine used six long-range ballistic missiles known as the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS.
The strike came just two days after President Joe Biden gave Kyiv permission to fire American missiles deep into Russia, in what amounted to a major shift of US policy.
Putin on Tuesday signed a decree allowing Russia to fire nuclear weapons in response to a conventional attack on its soil that threatens its sovereignty, including by drones.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the attack was a clear signal that the West wanted to escalate the Ukraine conflict.
“The fact that ATACMS were used repeatedly in the Bryansk region overnight is, of course, a signal that they want escalation,” Lavrov said in Rio de Janeiro, where he is attending a G20 meeting.
“Without the Americans, it is impossible to use these high-tech missiles, as President Putin has repeatedly said.”
Putin said on Sept 12 that Western approval for such Ukrainian strikes would mean “the direct involvement of NATO countries, the United States and European countries in the war in Ukraine”, because NATO military infrastructure and personnel would have to be involved in the targeting and firing of the missiles.
Lavrov said on Tuesday that he hoped Moscow’s revised nuclear doctrine, in which the threshold for a nuclear strike has been lowered, would be “attentively read”.
The strike represented a show of force for Ukraine as it tries to show Western allies that providing more powerful and sophisticated weapons will pay off by degrading Russia’s forces and bolstering Ukraine’s prospects in the war.
Officials in Kyiv had pleaded for months for permission to use ATACMS to strike military targets deeper inside Russia before the Biden administration relented and gave its assent on Sunday.
The authorisation came just two months before the return to office of President-elect Donald Trump, who has said he would seek a quick end to the war in Ukraine.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed that five of the ATACMS missiles were shot down on Tuesday and another was damaged, saying that falling fragments caused a fire at the military facility but that there were no casualties.