US ‘fuelling fire’ of Ukraine conflict with missiles decision: Russia

Several US outlets reported on Sunday that the Biden administration has decided to allow Ukraine to conduct strikes with US-made weapons deep into sovereign Russian territory.

“It is clear that the outgoing administration in Washington intends to take steps to continue to add fuel to the fire and to further inflame tensions around this conflict,” Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on Monday.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, had long pushed for authorisation from Washington to use the powerful Army Tactical Missile System, known by its initials Atacms, to hit targets inside Russia.

Peskov added Putin had expressed Russia’s position clearly in September when the Russian leader warned that the move to let Kyiv use longer-range weapons against targets inside Russia would mean NATO would be directly “at war” with Moscow.

Without going into specifics, Putin said at the time Moscow would “take the appropriate decisions based on the threats that we will face”.

On Monday, Russian officials similarly pledged that Moscow would react to President Biden’s decision, though they did not elaborate on what that response might entail.