THE WASHINGTON POST: Russia says US adding ‘fuel to the fire’ by letting Ukraine use ATACMS

Russian officials on Monday furiously condemned President Joe Biden’s decision to permit Ukraine to use American longer-range missiles for limited strikes inside Russia, even as Russian missiles killed at least 21 people inside Ukraine in a pair of attacks.

Though Russian President Vladimir Putin himself has yet to respond to another crossing of his “red lines” by the West, his spokesman said the move added “fuel to the fire” and tensions to the relationship.

“This is a qualitatively new round of tension and a qualitatively new situation in terms of US involvement in this conflict,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists in a Monday briefing. “It’s clear that the outgoing administration in Washington intends to take steps to, they’ve said so, to continue to add fuel to the fire and to further provoke the level of tension.”

Restrictions on allowing Kyiv to use the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, were eased after about 10,000 elite North Korean troops were sent to Kursk, a region of Russia along Ukraine’s northern border, to help Moscow’s forces retake territory gained by Ukraine.

A former Kremlin official told The Washington Post that Moscow now believes that NATO has gone to war with Russia and that “they will proceed accordingly.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

US deputy national security adviser Jon Finer responded from the Group of 20 summit in Brazil to Peskov’s statement, saying that “the fire was lit by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” while declining to publicly confirm the authorisation of the weapons.

“I think this notion of fuel on the fire is, frankly, a side issue to the main issue, which is Russia waging a war of aggression across a sovereign border into Ukraine and continuing to do so,” he said at a briefing, pointing to Russia’s bombardment of Ukraine over the weekend and the deployment of North Korean forces.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell appeared to encourage other countries to follow Washington’s decision, expressing hope that the bloc’s members could agree to allow Ukraine to use other weapons to strike inside Russian territory.

“I’ve been saying once and again that Ukraine should be able to use the arms we provided to them, in order to not only stop the arrows but also to be able to hit the archers,” Borrell said before a meeting with EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock welcomed Biden’s decision, telling local broadcaster RBB that “if our normal life was simply to be attacked, then we would defend ourselves too.” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, however, remains resolute in his decision to not send long-range Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said he was not “opening the champagne just yet” because it’s not clear to what extent the restrictions have been lifted or if Ukraine has enough of the US weapons to “make a difference on the battlefield.”

Reaction from Ukrainian officials was fairly subdued, with President Volodymyr Zelensky referring only obliquely to the issue in his Sunday night public address. Local media suggested there was a degree of annoyance that the lifting of restrictions was announced before any strikes took place.

“There’s a lot of talk in the media about us receiving permission for respective actions. But strikes are not carried out with words. Such things are not announced. Missiles will speak for themselves,” Zelensky said in his address.

Tymofiy Mylovanov, the president of the Kyiv School of Economics, expressed dissatisfaction that the missiles were for use only in the Kursk region, calling the news that all restrictions had been lifted “too good to be true.”

“I think the weakness of the Biden administration in facing up to Putin is the key reason why we are entering the third year of war,” he said on X.

The removal of the restrictions has infuriated many in Russia, with several officials and propagandists promising reprisals. Prominent TV propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov said Sunday in his weekly show that the West would be directly entering the war “with all the ensuing consequences for their own territories and those inhabiting them.”

Other Russian officials, meanwhile, noted it was not entirely unexpected.

“The standoff will become even fiercer, and the talks will become more difficult,” said Andrei Kartapolov, chairman of the parliamentary defence committee. “We expected them to escalate before the end of Biden’s office - that was completely obvious.”

An op-ed by Russian state newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta interpreted the move as a way for the outgoing Biden administration to “complicate the implementation of any of Trump’s peace initiatives.” During his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump claimed he would resolve the war in “24 hours,” expressed skepticism about continuing American aid to Ukraine and promised to press for immediate talks.

“But on the other hand, it would give the Republican, known for his signature style of making deals from a position of strength, a trump card in future conflict-resolution negotiations: the ability to overturn Biden’s authorisation at any time,” the op-ed continued.

Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted that the decision risked provoking World War III, echoing a number of Russian officials, including lawmaker Maria Butina, who spent 15 months in a US prison for working as an unregistered Russian agent.

Moscow has responded to Trump’s election victory with cautious excitement, seeing it as an opening for Russia to shatter Western unity on Ukraine and recalibrate the global balance of power, while remaining conscious of Trump’s unpredictability.

Putin said nothing Sunday night, but in the past, he has described long-range strikes using Western weapons as a red line for Russia, and he has issued plenty of warnings while Ukraine pushed Washington to lift the restrictions.

“This would mean that NATO countries, the United States and European countries are fighting Russia,” Putin said in September. “And if this is so, then, bearing in mind the change in the very essence of this conflict, we will make appropriate decisions based on the threats that will be created for us.”

Putin has kept the nature of these “appropriate decisions” purposefully vague. A few weeks after his remarks, Russia, in a not so subtle move, announced changes to its nuclear doctrine that lays out preconditions for potential triggers to use nuclear weapons.

The chairman of Russia’s State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, said that a response to Biden’s decision was “inevitable” and that it would be a question for Russia’s Defence Ministry.

“As for the use of the weapons in question - they are already in use,” wrote Volodin on Telegram. “Expanding its use may cause damage, but it will not change the situation on the battlefield. … It will only aggravate the fate of Ukraine and its future. And it will finally destroy Russian-American relations.”

The surprise Ukrainian incursion in the Kursk region in August - a direct ground assault on Russian territory - was seen as slashing through the reddest of the lines that Putin has outlined. Yet his response has been muted, with Russian troops initially focused on pushing ahead in the Donetsk region of Ukraine rather than regaining their own territory.

Now, as the Kremlin anticipates possible negotiations with the incoming Trump administration to end the war, the battle over roughly 200 square miles of land in western Russia has intensified while Moscow seeks to strip Ukraine of its leverage.

Russian missiles and drones continued to pummel Ukraine amid the debate over Ukraine’s use of missiles. In the eastern Ukrainian region of Sumy, two ballistic missiles and one guided missile killed 11 people and wounded close to 100 on Sunday evening. Then on Monday, a ballistic missile struck a residential district in the southern port city of Odessa, killing 10 people and injuring 39.

“These are not accidental strikes - these are demonstrative strikes,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram on Monday. “After the calls and meetings with Putin, after all the false gossip in the media about an alleged ‘refraining’ from strikes, Russia shows what it is really interested in: only war.”

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