The U.S. confirms Ukraine fired long-range ATACMS into Russia for the 1st time

Caption

In this image provided by the U.S. Army, U.S. soldiers conduct live fire testing at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., on Dec. 14, 2021, of early versions of the Army Tactical Missile System. / U.S. Army via AP

MOSCOW — Ukraine has fired six ATACMS missiles into Russia, the Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday, marking the first attack using the U.S.-made longer-range weapons in 1,000 days of war.

A U.S. official, who was not authorized to speak to reporters, confirmed to NPR that Ukraine fired U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile System into Russia for the first time.

Russia's Defense Ministry said Ukrainian forces fired the ATACMS into the Bryansk region. It said Russian air defense systems destroyed five of the missiles mid-flight and damaged a sixth, whose fragments started a small fire on the ground. No injuries were reported.

The barrage appears to be the result of the Biden administration's decision — which NPR and other news outlets have reported — to lift restrictions on Ukraine's use of sophisticated long-range Western weaponry to target inside Russia.

Ukrainian officials have not confirmed the reports.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday if the media reports were true that Ukraine now has U.S. approval to use Western weapons to strike deep inside Russia, that would spark a "new spiral of tensions" with Washington.

In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin argued that Ukraine's military was incapable of deploying sophisticated long-range weapons without direct input from NATO specialists. "This will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia," Putin said.

Ukraine had lobbied Washington for many months to get permission to use the ATACMS.

Also on Tuesday, Putin signed a decree updating Russia's nuclear doctrine — in effect, expanding its options for carrying out a nuclear strike.

The new doctrine, which Putin announced in September, would consider a conventional-weapons attack by a nonnuclear state that's supported by a nuclear-armed nation as a joint attack on Russia that could meet the conditions for a nuclear response.

That appeared to send a warning to Ukraine, the United States and other nuclear-armed backers.

Both the news of possible Ukrainian strikes and Russia's updated nuclear doctrine come about two months before President-elect Donald Trump is to take the oath of office in Washington.

In his campaign for the presidency, Trump criticized the amount of U.S. aid for Ukraine and repeatedly suggested he would seek a swift negotiated end to the war in Ukraine with Moscow.

NPR's Tom Bowman contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.