Ukraine media has said Kyiv used US ATACMS rockets to strike inside Russia for the first time just as Vladimir Putin approved a new Russian nuclear doctrine.
Explosions were seen at an ammunition depot in Karachev, around 75 miles from the Ukrainian border, as Ukraine marked the 1000th day of the conflict to use the missiles in an offensive capacity for the first time.
The Kremlin has called Biden’s decision to permit Ukraine to strike into Russia an “escalation” as it once more attempted to use its nuclear capabilities to intimidate the West.
The dictator’s mouthpiece, Dmitry Peskov, said this morning: “The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in the event of aggression against it with the use of conventional weapons.”
Putin’s decree would allow Russian nuclear weapons to be deployed against a non-nuclear force if it was backed up by a nuclear-armed nation – for example, Ukraine backed by the United States.
A respected Ukrainian news outlet citing a source in the country’s army general staff said this happened overnight with a missile strike on a Russian ammunition arsenal in the Bryansk region.
Ukraine 24 channel carried a report saying, “Ukraine strikes Russia with ATACMS – a warehouse in Bryansk region was attacked”.
However, the general staff did not confirm this version on the record.
News outlet RBC-Ukraine also reported: “The Ukrainian Defence Forces have struck Russian territory with ATACMS ballistic missiles for the first time. The target was successfully hit.”
It cited an “informed source in the Defence Forces”.
The Russian defence ministry later confirmed that Ukraine had used ATACMS missiles, supplied by the US, to strike the ammunition arsenal in the Bryansk region.
The AFU overnight struck with six ATACMS missiles at a facility in the Bryansk region, the Russian Defence Ministry said.
Five were shot down and one “damaged”, according to the official Russian account.
Fragments of a damaged ATACMS missile launched by the Ukrainian Armed Forces fell on the “technical territory” of a military facility in the Bryansk region, the ministry admitted.
A fire ignited, the ministry admitted.
No casualties were reported, but the strike appears to be the scenario envisaged by Russia’s updated nuclear doctrine.
US President Joe Biden has resisted Ukrainian pressure to be allowed to use the rockets in an offensive capacity for over a year.
However, following the election of Donald Trump, whose re-emergence in the White House looks set to alter the conflict dramatically, in addition to the Kremlin’s deployment of North Korean troops seems to have altered the outgoing president’s viewpoint.
It is understood that strikes in Russia will require US permission before launch and will predominately be targeted towards North Korean troops in the Kursk region.
The ammunition site in today’s strike is located in the Bryansk region, on the northern border of the Kursk region. It likely met the threshold due to its proximity and value to a future Russian counterattack in the territory seized by Ukraine in August.
It remains unclear whether the UK or France will permit Ukraine to use the weapons they supply similarly.
