Russia vows response against US missiles

MOSCOW/KYIV — Russia warned on Tuesday that it would respond after Ukraine fired longer-range US missiles into its territory for the first time on the 1,000th day of the conflict.

A senior official told the Agence France-Presse that a strike on Russia's Bryansk region earlier on Tuesday "was carried out by ATACMS missiles", a reference to the US-supplied Army Tactical Missile System.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the attack showed Western countries wanted to "escalate" the conflict.

"We will be taking this as a qualitatively new phase of the Western war against Russia. And we will react accordingly," Lavrov told a news conference at the G20 summit in Brazil.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree approving Russia's updated nuclear doctrine on Tuesday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow's revised doctrine outlines the possibility of a nuclear response if Kyiv uses Western-made missiles against Russia.

The spokesman further said that Russia would view the use of Western nonnuclear missiles by Ukraine as an attack by a nonnuclear state with the support of a nuclear state against the country, potentially justifying the use of nuclear weapons by Moscow.

Peskov said that the doctrine outlines that "aggression against Russia by any nonnuclear state with the participation or support of a nuclear state" would be considered a joint attack.

On Tuesday, US President Joe Biden approved the provision of anti-personnel land mines to Ukraine, a US official told Reuters.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday stressed the importance of the US support to Fox News. "If they cut. … I think we will lose," Zelensky said in an interview with the US television network.

The 1,000th day of Russia's special military operation comes at a perilous time for Ukrainian forces across the front, particularly near the cities of Kupiansk and Pokrovsk.

Russia has also intensified strikes on Ukrainian cities in recent days. Russia's air defense systems destroyed 44 drones overnight, including 20 over the northwestern Novgorod region, Russia's defense ministry said on Wednesday.

Ukrainian lawmakers voted on Tuesday to approve the 2025 budget with more than $50 billion, or 60 percent of all expenditures, allocated to defense and security.

Also in Kyiv, the US embassy said it received a warning of a potentially significant Russian air attack on Wednesday and would be closed as a precaution.

In a statement, the embassy also instructed employees to shelter in place and also recommended that US citizens in Kyiv be prepared to immediately shelter in the event of an air alert.

The Italian and Greek embassies also shut to the public for the day, but the UK government said that its embassy remained open.

Agencies - Xinhua