Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) — The Kremlin warned about this on Monday President Joe Biden’s decision Allowing Ukraine to attack targets in Russia with US-supplied longer-range missiles adds “fuel to the fire.” of the war and would further escalate international tensions.

Biden’s policy shift added to that an uncertain, new factor to the conflict on the eve of the Milestone of 1000 days since Russia began its full-scale invasion in 2022.

It also came as a Russian ballistic missile carrying cluster munitions struck a residential area of ​​Sumy in northern Ukraine, killing 11 people and wounding 84 others. Another barrage of rockets sparked apartment fires in the southern port of Odesa, killing at least 10 people and wounding 43, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said.

Washington is loosening the limits on what Ukraine can attack with its American make Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMsU.S. officials told The Associated Press on Sunday after months of ruling out such a move over fears it would escalate the conflict and spark a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.

The Kremlin was quick to condemn.

“It is clear that the outgoing administration in Washington intends to take steps – and they have spoken about this – to continue to add fuel to the fire and provoke a further escalation of tensions around this conflict,” said spokesman Dmitry Peskov .

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia went further at a U.N. Security Council meeting marking a thousand days of war, saying Moscow is “astonished” that the leaders of Britain and France are “keen to tap into the outgoing government’s hands.” and not only their countries, but the whole of Europe, in a large-scale escalation with drastic consequences.”

The scope of the new shooting guidelines is not clear. But the change came after the US, South Korea and NATO said so North Korean troops are in Russia and apparently they are being deployed to help Moscow drive Ukrainian troops out of the Russian border region of Kursk.

Biden’s decision was motivated almost entirely by North Korea’s entry into the fighting, according to a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, and was made just before he left for the US. Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation top in Peru.

Russia is also slow Ukraine’s outnumbered army is being pushed back in the eastern Donetsk region. It also performed a devastating air campaign against civilian areas in Ukraine.

Peskov referred journalists to a statement by President Vladimir Putin in September in which he said allowing Ukraine to target Russia would significantly raise the stakes.

It would “dramatically change the nature of the conflict,” 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 supply longer-range weapons also provide targeting services to Kiev. “This fundamentally changes how their involvement in the conflict takes place,” he said.

Putin warned in June that Moscow could provide longer-range weapons to others to attack Western targets if NATO allowed Ukraine to use its allies’ weapons to attack Russian territory. After signing a treaty with North Korea, Putin explicitly threatened to supply weapons to Pyongyang, noting that Moscow could echo Western arguments that it is up to Ukraine to decide how to use them.

“The Westerners are supplying weapons to Ukraine and saying, ‘We have no control over anything here and it doesn’t matter how they are used,’” Putin has said. “Well, we can also say, ‘We’ve delivered something to someone – and then we have no control over anything.’ And let them think about it.”

Putin also reaffirmed Moscow’s willingness to use nuclear weapons if the country sees a threat to its sovereignty.

Biden’s move will mean “the direct involvement of the United States and its satellites in military action against Russia, as well as a radical change in the essence and nature of the conflict,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on January 20, has raised uncertainty about whether his administration would continue military aid to Ukraine. He has also promised to end the war quickly.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded subdued on Sunday to the approval he and his government have been seeking for more than a year, adding: “The missiles will speak for themselves.”

“The longer Ukraine can strike, the shorter the war will be,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on Monday before the UN Security Council meeting marking the 1,000th day milestone.

Asked whether Britain would follow the United States in authorizing the use of its longer-range missiles, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who chaired the meeting, declined to comment. He said this would “jeopardize operational security and could only play into Putin’s hands.”

French UN Ambassador Nicolas De Riviere, whose country has also given Ukraine longer-range missiles, told the Security Council, without directly saying what his country will do: “Ukraine’s right to its legitimate defense includes the ability to attack military targets to attack those involved in operations. focused on the territory.”

Ukraine’s Sybiha said a US green light to use longer-range missiles against Russia “could be a game changer”, but others are less certain.

ATACMS, which have a range of about 300 kilometers (190 miles), can reach far behind the roughly 1,000-kilometer-long frontline in Ukraine, but they have a relatively short range compared to other types of ballistic missiles and cruise missiles.

The policy change came “too late to have a major strategic impact,” said Patrick Bury, senior associate professor of security at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom.

“The ultimate impact this will have is probably to slow down the pace of Russian offensives taking place now,” he said, adding that Ukraine could attack targets in Kursk, logistics hubs or command headquarters.

Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, agreed that the US action would not change the course of the war, noting that Ukraine would need “large stockpiles of ATACMS, which it does not have and will not received because the United States’ own supplies are limited.”

On a political level, the move “is a boost for the Ukrainians and gives them an opportunity to try to show that they are still viable and worth supporting” as Trump prepares to take office, said Matthew Savill, Director of Military Sciences. at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

The trigger for the policy change was the arrival in Russia of North Korean troops, according to Glib Voloskyi, an analyst at the CBA Initiatives Center, a Kiev-based think tank.

“This is a signal the Biden administration is sending to North Korea and Russia, indicating that the decision to involve North Korean units has crossed a red line,” he said.

Russian lawmakers and state media criticized the West for what they called an escalating move and threatened a harsh response.

“Biden has apparently decided to end his presidential term and go down in history as ‘Bloody Joe,’” lawmaker Leonid Slutsky told Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

Vladimir Jabarov, deputy head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of parliament, called it “a very big step toward the start of World War III” and an attempt to “reduce the degree of freedom for Trump.”

Russian newspapers offered similar predictions of doom. “The madmen who draw NATO into a direct conflict with our country may soon suffer great pain,” Rossiyskaya Gazeta said.

Some NATO allies welcomed the move.

President Andrzej Duda of Poland, which borders Ukraine, hailed the decision as a “very important, perhaps even a breakthrough moment” in the war.

“In recent days we have seen the decisive intensification of Russian attacks on Ukraine, especially those rocket attacks attacking civilian objects, killing people, ordinary Ukrainians,” Duda said.

The easing of restrictions on Ukraine was “a good thing,” said Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna of Russian neighbor Estonia.

“We have said that from the beginning – that there should be no restrictions on military support,” he told senior European Union diplomats in Brussels. “And we have to understand that the situation is more serious than it was a few months ago.”

But Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, known for his pro-Russian views, described Biden’s decision as “an unprecedented escalation” that would prolong the war.

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Associated Press reporters Matthew Lee in Washington, Lorne Cook in Brussels, Danica Kirka in London, Hanna Arhirova in Kiev, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Karel Janicek in Prague, Czech Republic, contributed to this report.

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