By Athena Papakosta

For the first time, the outgoing president of the United States, joe biden, gave the green light to order Ukraine to use US long-range missiles for strikes deeper into Russian territory.

According to the New York Times, citing US officials, Washington is lifting restrictions it had put in place to stand in the way of Kiev, which plans to launch its first long-range strikes within the next few days. According to the same sources, the first strikes are expected to be carried out using ATACMS missiles – which have a range of up to 300 kilometers – initially against Russian and North Korean troops in the Kursk region, in western Russia. At the same time, the White House and the Pentagon have not made any comment.

The Biden decision signals a significant change in the attitude of the United States in the Russia-Ukraine war and indeed two months before the assumption of presidential duties by Donald Trump, who has pledged to limit American aid to Kiev and end the war as soon as possible.

The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, has been urging Washington for months to lift restrictions and allow its forces to strike military targets deeper inside Russia. The U.S. shift in stance, after all, comes as Moscow has deployed North Korean troops to bolster its armed forces — a move that has alarmed the United States and Ukraine.

In a first reading of the Biden decision, analysts are inclined to conclude that the outgoing president of the United States is allegedly giving an opportunity to the Ukrainian president so that Kiev can manage to keep a piece of Russian land as a bargaining chip – in any possible negotiations between the two warring parties in the future. But no one can ignore Moscow’s clear warnings in this regard.

Last September the president of Russia was clear. Supplying long-range weapons to Ukraine for use against Russia would be a declaration of war, Vladimir Putin has warned. Correspondingly, a month ago, he had pointed out that Russia will respond if NATO allows Ukraine to use long-range weapons. In particular, he had underlined that Russia will use “a range of responses”. At the same time, Moscow has modified its nuclear doctrine and under the proposed changes it could use nuclear weapons if hit by conventional missiles and consider any attack against it backed by a nuclear power as a joint attack.

According to the Russian news agency TASS, the deputy chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Council of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Dzabarov, stressed that the decision of the United States may lead to the Third World War and will receive a swift response. For his part, Volodymyr Zelensky, on Sunday night, underlined that “the missiles speak for themselves” adding that the strikes “are not announced”.

The Biden decision unlocks the door that Zelensky has been persistently knocking on for months, and according to analysts, another one may be opened, the one that will also allow the use of the British and French-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles. So far, the Elysee and Downing Street have also made no comment with the British Prime Minister, at the time of writing, traveling to Brazil for the G20 Summit.

In Rio de Janeiro, however, the Foreign Minister of Russia, Sergey Lavrov, is also going and fatefully everyone’s eyes are turned to him since the question remains how Moscow will respond. At the moment the most powerful occupant of the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin has not made any statement. He cannot travel to Brazil as he has an arrest warrant pending against him from the International Criminal Court.