Ukraine confirms for the first time: we fired long-range missiles at Russia

Senior officials in Ukraine and the USA confirmed today (Tuesday) to the media that Ukraine attacked tonight with American missiles on Russian territory. In the attack, a Russian military depot was bombed with ATACMS long-range surface-to-surface missiles.Russia also confirmed the report of the attack, and claimed that five out of six missiles launched at Russia were intercepted, and that shrapnel fell on a military base in the Bryansk district and caused a fire, with no casualties.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov addressed the attack at the G20 summit in Brazil, and threatened that his country might use weapons of mass destruction to respond. “This is a sign that they are looking for an escalation,” Lavrov said. “Putin has already issued his warnings, Russia has today issued its updated nuclear doctrine – and I hope they will read it carefully,” he added. Later in his words he warned that “Russia is convinced that nuclear weapons are a deterrent.”

The Deputy Head of the National Security Council in Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, also commented on the Ukrainian attack and claimed that “Russia may respond with weapons of mass destruction against Kiev and NATO infrastructure, wherever they are located.”

Washington reacted to Russia’s announcement of updating its nuclear doctrine. The spokesman for the National Security Council of the White House said: “The US was not surprised by Russia’s announcement, and has no intention of changing its position.”

Since the beginning of the war, Russia has threatened many times, directly and indirectly, that it will use nuclear weapons if it is attacked on its territory with American missiles. This is despite the fact that Ukraine has already attacked with the same ATACMS missiles, in the Crimea many times – with the approval of the USA. The same base that was attacked tonight in the Bryansk district was also recently attacked with UAVs.

The Russian response so far to those attacks and extensive territory occupation by Ukraine in the Kursk region of Russia has been the deployment of 12,000 soldiers from North Korea, and not the use of weapons of mass destruction. Ukraine’s move comes after it was announced on Sunday that President Biden decided on a dramatic policy change, and unusually authorized Kiev to attack with long-range American missiles deep in Russian territory – a move that up to this point, during 1,000 days of war, he had refused to approve.