The Kremlin has highlighted this Monday one of the red lines that it has marked since the beginning of the war with Ukraine: Washington’s authorization for kyiv to attack targets on Russian soil with its long-range American missiles will cause “a qualitatively new situation in the participation of the United States in this conflict.” The spokesman for the Russian president, Dmitri Peskov, recalled the words expressed by Vladimir Putin in September, at the entrance to a cultural forum in Saint Petersburg, where the president warned that permission to use these projectiles “will mean that the countries of the “NATO, the US and European countries are at war with Russia.”
The Reuters agency and the newspapers The New York Times and Washington Post They published this Sunday that the outgoing president of the United States, Joe Biden, has given permission to the Ukrainian army to attack with its ATACMS rockets inside Russian territory, where military bases and airfields remained protected until now. According to the North American media, Washington has made a 180-degree turn in its policy towards the use of these weapons, at least until Donald Trump’s inauguration in two months, on January 20, 2025.
“At the moment they are only publications in the Western media, but it is obvious that the outgoing administration in Washington intends to take action,” Peskov told Russian media this Monday. “They talk about this to continue adding fuel to the fire and continue causing a greater escalation of tension around this conflict,” added the Kremlin spokesperson.
The Biden administration had until now rejected the pleas of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for fear of provoking a military escalation with Russia. “If this decision has been formulated and communicated to the kyiv regime formally, then, of course, it represents a qualitatively new round of tension,” Putin’s spokesman emphasized hours after the news broke.
In addition to issuing verbal warnings to the West, Russian authorities have also modified their nuclear doctrine. Putin met at the end of September with the Permanent Council of the Security Council for Nuclear Deterrence to discuss the new amendments. The meeting, which is usually secret, was broadcast on state television to send a message to the world.
Weapons of mass destruction
Among other changes, the Kremlin decided to consider an “aggression” by a state that does not possess nuclear weapons as a joint attack if it has the support of a nuclear power. In that case, the new doctrine would contemplate the use of weapons of mass destruction if necessary.
On the other hand, Putin’s spokesman has declined to comment on the veracity of Turkey’s alleged plan to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine, although he has emphasized that the Kremlin will not give up the entire regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. “The freezing of fighting along the front is, a priori, unacceptable for the Russian side. The conditions formulated by President Putin in June remain fully valid. This is what needs to be done to stop the fighting,” Peskov emphasized.
The US agency Bloomberg published this Monday some details of the proposal that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will make at the G-20 summit in Brazil to freeze the battles on the current battle lines. According to Bloomberg, Ankara proposes vetoing Ukraine’s accession to NATO within 10 years and creating a demilitarized zone in the east of the country with the presence of international troops.
A Turkish government source has assured the Russian agency Ria Novosti that Bloomberg’s revelation “does not correspond to reality.” However, his sources in the Turkish Government have told the Russian media that Erdogan will prioritize the debate on a truce in the G-20. “The main task now is to stop the bloodshed and achieve a sustainable ceasefire,” the Russian agency has published.
