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Early this morning, Ukraine’s military launched a volley of American-made ballistic missiles into Russia for the first time. The attack came on the 1,000th day of the war and less than a week after President Biden gave the Ukrainians permission to do so in a major shift of American policy.
The strike targeted an ammunition depot in the Bryansk region of southwestern Russia, causing explosions, Ukrainian officials said. Russian officials claimed to have shot down five of the six missiles. The use of long-range American weapons was a show of force that demonstrated how continued Western support could help Ukraine more easily degrade Russian forces.
The attack came on the same day President Vladimir Putin lowered Russia’s threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. He declared that Russia could use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty is threatened, even against a nonnuclear state so long as that state is backed by a nuclear power — similar to the situation in Ukraine. The timing of the long-planned move was clearly meant to send a message to Europe and the U.S.
The White House said it had observed “no changes to Russia’s nuclear posture” and played down Putin’s new doctrine. The reaction was telling, my colleague David Sanger wrote. Over nearly three years, the war in Ukraine has inured Washington and the world to the renewed use of nuclear weapons as the ultimate bargaining chip.
In related news, Germany’s defense minister claimed that the severing of fiber-optic cables this week in the Baltic Sea was an act of sabotage aimed at Ukraine’s European allies.
