Kremlin says Biden's missile decision escalates tensions in war with Ukraine

The Kremlin accused U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday of escalating hostility over Moscow’s nearly three-year-long war on Ukraine with his marked policy shift to allow Kyiv to use Washington-supplied, long-range missiles to strike inside Russia.

The decision by Biden, who is leaving office in two months, marks a "new spiral of tensions and a qualitatively new situation from the point of view of the U.S.'s engagement in the conflict,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin did not comment publicly, but Peskov referred journalists to a Putin statement in September, in which he said allowing Ukraine to target Russia would significantly raise the stakes in the conflict.

It would change "the very nature of the conflict dramatically," Putin said at the time. "This will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia."

Peskov claimed that Western countries supplying long-range weapons also provide targeting services to Kyiv. "This fundamentally changes the modality of their involvement in the conflict," Peskov said.

Until now, the United States had allowed Ukraine to deploy shorter-range American weapons, like the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems the U.S. donated in the first months of the war, to hit Russian targets over the border from Ukraine's Kharkiv region. The range of these rockets was around 80 kilometers, but the Biden decision will allow the use of Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, rockets that can reach targets at a distance of up to about 300 kilometers.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had lobbied Washington for months to be allowed to use the longer-range rockets against military targets deep inside Russia, contending they were needed to hit rocket arsenals and other weaponry being stored by Russia before their use targeting Ukraine’s cities and electrical grids.

Biden, until now, had resisted allowing use of the longer-range missiles for fear it would escalate the war and tensions with the U.S.-led NATO military alliance. But North Korea’s deployment of troops to fight alongside Moscow’s forces alarmed Washington.

The U.S. says the new missiles could first be used against Russian and North Korean forces trying to retake the Kursk region in southern Russia, which Ukraine captured in a surprise attack in August and still holds.

ATACMS are long-range guided missiles produced by U.S. aerospace and defense company Lockheed Martin. The missiles carry a 227-kilogram fragmentation warhead and are tough to intercept due to their high speed.

The rockets are fitted with a specialized GPS and carry cluster munitions. When the clusters open in the air, hundreds of bomblets are released rather than a single warhead.

Whether the Biden decision to supply the missiles -- and how many – remains in place when President-elect Donald Trump takes office January 20 is uncertain. Trump has expressed skepticism about continued U.S. support for Ukraine, declining during a September political debate to say that he wanted Ukraine to win the war.

Trump has claimed he would broker an end to the war before he takes office but not said how he would accomplish that.

The president-elect has not commented publicly on the Biden decision to supply Ukraine with the longer-range missiles, but his son, Donald Trump Jr., quickly criticized it.

“The Military Industrial Complex seems to want to make sure they get World War 3 going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives,” he said on social media.

Biden’s policy shift came as a Russian ballistic missile with cluster munitions on Sunday evening struck a residential area of Sumy, a city in northern Ukraine, killing 11 people, including two children, and injuring 84 others.

On Monday, another Russian missile attack started fires in two apartment blocks in Odesa, in southern Ukraine. At least eight people were killed and 18 were injured, including a child, regional Gov. Oleh Kiper said.

The Sumy attack on Sunday followed a massive Russian bombardment of Ukraine’s power infrastructure earlier in the day.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine and its allies should focus on “really forcing Russia to end the war.”

“Today marked one of the largest and most dangerous Russian attacks in the entire war - 210 drones and missiles launched simultaneously – including hypersonic and aeroballistic ones,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.