By Athena Papakosta

A few hours after Washington gave the green light, Ukraine yesterday, Tuesday, launched long-range missiles against Russian territory for the first time. The Ministry of Defense of Russia proceeded with the relevant announcement, pointing out that the target was its region Bryansk on the border with Ukraine.

At the same time, US officials confirmed the use of ATACMS missiles to the US network CBS News.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, five missiles were shot down and one was damaged with its fragments causing a fire at a military installation in the area.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, Sergei Lavrov, blamed the United States that they consciously seek to scale up. As he emphasized, the use of ATACMS would not be possible “without the support of the Americans, as Putin has repeatedly said” and added that Russia “starts from the ground up” that the missiles were used by “American military experts”.

Mr. Lavrov then turned his attention to new nuclear doctrine made public by Moscow and according to this threshold for the use of nuclear weapons … is being lowered.

“We will consider this a new phase in the West’s war against Russia and we will react accordingly,” he said during a press conference at the G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro, urging the revised nuclear doctrine to be read carefully.

Under the amendments requested for weeks by Russian President Vladimir Putin and approved yesterday, any conventional attack against Russia with the help of a nuclear force would be considered a joint attack against the Russian Federation.

Ukraine has been using ATACMS for a year already but only against Ukrainian territories occupied by the Russian armed forces. These missiles have a range of up to 300 kilometers and are difficult to intercept. After the green light given by the United States of America, Kiev is now able to strike deeper into Russian territory.

As announced by the Russian Ministry of Defense, there were no casualties from the attack in Bryansk, while the fire was extinguished immediately. For their part, the Ukrainian armed forces confirmed a strike in Bryansk, Russia, but did not say whether or not they used US ATACMS.

Now 1,000 days into the war, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, called on the Europeans to push Russia harder. “The more time Putin has, the worse the conditions become,” he said while speaking at an emergency meeting of the European Parliament, calling on the European Union to “deprive him of money and power” so that he is forced into meaningful negotiations at the end of the war.

For its part, the State Department, commenting on the developments, pointed out that the United States “has no reason” to change its own nuclear stance, but “will continue to call on Russia to stop its bellicose and irresponsible rhetoric.” As US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller explained, since the beginning of the war of aggression against Ukraine, “Russia has sought to coerce and intimidate both Ukraine and other countries around the world through irresponsible rhetoric and behavior to the nuclear ones”.