Moscow warns US that it allowed Ukraine to hit Russia, so…

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — President Joe Biden’s decision letting Ukraine strike targets inside Russia with US-supplied long-range missiles was met with ominous warnings from Moscow, a hint of threat from Kiev and signs of approval from some Western allies.

Biden’s policy shift added an uncertain but potentially crucial new factor to the eve war his 1,000 day milestone.

News of Biden’s switch came the day a Russian ballistic missile carrying cluster munitions struck a residential area in Sumy, a city in northern Ukraine, killing 11 people, including two children, and injuring 84 others.

On Monday, another Russian missile attack set off fires in two blocks of flats in Odesa, southern Ukraine. At least eight people were killed and 18 were injured, including a child, regional governor Oleh Kiper said.

Washington is easing limits on what U.S.-made weaponry can hit Ukraine, U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Sunday, after months of ruling out such a move over fears of escalating the conflict and provoking a confrontation direct between Russia and NATO.

The scope of the new firing guidelines is unclear. But the change came after the US, South Korea and NATO recently said so North Korean troops are in Russia and are reportedly being deployed to help the Russian military drive Ukrainian troops out of Russia’s Kursk border region.

Russia is also slow pushing back the outnumbered Ukrainian army in the east of the Donetsk region. He also drove a devastating and deadly air campaign against civilian areas in Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov referred reporters on Monday to a statement by Russian President Vladimir Putin in September in which he said allowing Ukraine to target Russia would significantly raise the stakes of 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 that provide long-range weapons also provide targeting services to Kiev. “This fundamentally changes the way they engage in the conflict,” Peskov said.

Last June, Putin warned that Russia could provide others with long-range weapons to strike Western targets in response to NATO allies, allowing Ukraine to use its weapons to attack Russian territory. He also reaffirmed Moscow’s willingness to use nuclear weapons if it sees a threat to its sovereignty.

President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office in about two months, has raised uncertainty over whether his administration will continue vital US military support for Ukraine. He also promised to end the war quickly.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a muted response to the endorsement he and his government have been seeking from Biden for more than a year.

“Today there is a lot of talk in the media about us getting permission for the relevant actions,” Zelenskyy said in his video speech on Sunday.

“But strikes are not done with words. Such things are not announced. The rockets will speak for themselves,” he said.

Russian officials and Kremlin-backed media criticized the West for what they said was an escalating step and threatened a tough response from Moscow.

“It seems that Biden has decided to end his presidential term and go down in history as ‘Bloody Joe,'” senior lawmaker Leonid Slutsky told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

Senator Vladimir Dzhabarov, in comments to the state news agency Tass, called Biden’s decision “a very big step towards the start of the third world war”.

Russian newspapers offered similar predictions of doom. “The madmen who are drawing NATO into direct conflict with our country may soon be in great pain,” Russian state newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta told its readers.

NATO member Lithuania’s foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, said he was not yet “opening the champagne” because it remains unclear exactly what restrictions have been lifted and whether Ukraine has enough US weapons to make a difference.

Margus Tsahkna, the foreign minister of Estonia, which is another Baltic country that fears a military threat from Russia, said the easing of restrictions on Ukraine was “a good thing”.

“We have said this from the beginning – that there should be no restrictions on military support,” he told a meeting of senior European Union diplomats in Brussels. “And we have to understand that the situation is worse (than) maybe even a few months ago.”

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Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed.

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