Signs of End Times: US allows long range missiles for deep strikes inside Russia

President Joe Biden has authorized Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied missiles to strike deeper inside Russia, easing limitations on the longer range weapons as Russia deploys thousands of North Korean troops to reinforce its war, according to a U.S. official and three other people familiar with the matter.

• Kremlin says U.S. decision is reckless and dangerous
• Kremlin: U.S. would be directly involved in conflict
• Russia will respond, Kremlin says
• Russians say Moscow should hit back
• Lawmaker says there are risks of world war

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.”

The decision by the United States to allow Ukraine to use long-range American missiles against targets in Russia marks a “new round of tension” in the war, the Kremlin said Monday.

“If such a decision was really formulated and brought to the attention of the Kyiv regime, then, of course, this is a qualitatively new round of tension and a qualitatively new situation in terms of the involvement of the United States in this conflict,” spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russian media.

The decision allowing Kyiv to use the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMs, for attacks farther inside Russia comes as President Vladimir Putin positions North Korean troops along Ukraine’s northern border to try to reclaim hundreds of miles of territory seized by Ukrainian forces.

Biden’s move also follows the presidential election victory of Donald Trump, who has said he would bring about a swift end to the war and raised uncertainty about whether his administration would continue the United States’ vital military support for Ukraine.

The first reaction from Ukraine to the long-awaited decision from the U.S. to use U.S.-supplied long-range missiles to strike deeper inside Russia was notably restrained.

The official and the others knowledgeable about the matter were not authorized to discuss the U.S. decision publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s reaction Sunday was notably restrained.

“Strikes are not made with words,” he said during his nightly video address. “Such things are not announced. The missiles will speak for themselves.”

Zelenskyy and many of his Western supporters have been pressing Biden for months to allow Ukraine to strike military targets deeper inside Russia with Western-supplied missiles, saying the U.S. ban had made it impossible for Ukraine to try to stop Russian attacks on its cities and electrical grids.

Russia also launched a massive drone and missile attack, described by officials as the largest in recent months, targeting energy infrastructure and killing civilians. The attack came as fears are mounting about Moscow’s intentions to devastate Ukraine’s power generation capacity before the winter.

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“And this is the answer to everyone who tried to achieve something with Putin through talks, phone calls, hugs and appeasement,” Zelenskyy said.

The comment appeared to be a dig at German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who spoke Friday with Putin in the first such call with a sitting head of a major Western power in nearly two years.