“Russia is lowering the threshold for a nuclear strike in response to a possible conventional attack,” said one expert.
Fresh fears of escalation were expressed Tuesday after Ukraine struck territory deep inside of Russia using long-range missiles for the first time within hours of the Kremlin announcing changes to its nuclear weapons posture.
In the pre-dawn hours, Ukraine reportedly used U.S.-supplied ATACMS missiles to attack an ammunition depot in the Bryansk region of Russia, located less than 200 miles north of a small strip of Russian territory currently held by Ukraine thanks to an incursion mounted in summer 2024. Russian forces are working to push back Ukrainian forces in the area.
The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that there was an attack. “At 3:25 a.m. this morning the enemy struck a site on the territory of the Bryansk Region with six ballistic missiles. According to confirmed data, US-made ATACMS tactical missiles were used. As a result of an anti-missile battle, five missiles were shot down and one was damaged by crews of S-400 and Pantsir missile defense systems,” the ministry said in statement, according to the Russian government-run news agency TASS.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia would respond “accordingly.”
The attack comes on the 1,000th day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that began in 2022, and mere days after President Joe Biden green lit Ukraine’s use of these specific weapons — in what The New York Times characterized as a “major shift of American foreign policy” and one foreign policy expert called a “needlessly escalatory step.”
Ukraine President Vlodomyr Zelenskyy has long sought permission from the U.
