The United States Embassy in kyiv announced this Wednesday that it is temporarily closing its facilities due to fear of a Russian attack. “The Embassy has received specific information of a potential Russian air attack on November 20,” says the note from the US diplomatic services. This alarm comes a day after Ukraine used American long-range ATACMS missiles for the first time against a military target on Russian soil. The Kremlin warned that the use of this weaponry on its territory is an escalation in the war and that they would respond with force.
It is not uncommon for Western diplomatic services in kyiv to send warnings of this type to their personnel assigned to Ukraine at the hottest moments of the war, especially in periods when Russia intensifies its large-scale bombings against the capital. Ukraine suffered a massive bombing on Monday, the first in the last three months, in which the invader used 120 missiles and 90 drone bombs. However, the decision by the US embassy comes a few days after the Kremlin threatened retaliation against the main European powers and Washington if they gave the green light to Ukraine’s use of its long-range missiles against Russian territory.
US President Joe Biden authorized on November 17 that ATACMS missiles, with a range of 300 kilometers, could be used against military targets in Russia. Added to this is that the Ukrainian Armed Forces have already been using American Himars precision rockets since August in the Russian province of Kursk. The first use by the Ukrainian army of ATACMS in Russia occurred in the early hours of Tuesday, against an arms depot in the province of Bryansk, bordering Ukraine. Ukrainian media and defense analysts assume that Washington will allow military units to be attacked in the Russian border provinces, but not beyond.
Russian threats are also directed at France and the United Kingdom, which are expected to take the same step as Biden by allowing their long-range Scalp and Storm Shadow missiles, respectively, to strike Russia. This context of tension does not differ greatly from other chapters of the invasion against Ukraine, when the Russian authorities have responded to each new Western military assistance with severe warnings. This was when the first American and European missiles were used against Russian positions on the Crimean peninsula or in the occupied regions of Donetsk and Lugansk. The Kremlin also raised its tone when the first American F-16 fighters entered service in Ukraine this year or when, in 2023, Germany gave the go-ahead for the supply of its Leopard tanks.
The current tension coincides with Vladimir Putin’s approval of a change in Russian nuclear doctrine that would allow it to respond with atomic weapons to aggression on its territory with conventional weapons. Sabrina Singh, spokesperson for the US Secretary of Defense, assured on Tuesday that the Pentagon is not aware that Russia is preparing a nuclear attack against Ukraine.
In recent hours, Ukraine has continued its periodic bombings against military installations on Russian soil. The intelligence services of the Ministry of Defense (GUR) assured this Tuesday that they destroyed a command post in the border province of Belgorod. The GUR reports its own operations, which, in the case of strikes on Russian soil, are usually by bomb drones.
Andrii Kovalenko, a member of the Ukrainian National Security Council, has also reported that a drone factory has been destroyed in Belgorod. Kovalenko added that his bomb drones destroyed a Russian arsenal this morning in the Novgorod region, 680 kilometers from Ukrainian territory. The fleet of unmanned vehicles is the main weapon that Ukraine has developed to carry out constant strikes hundreds of kilometers inside Russia.
It has also been known today, according to the American newspaper Washington Postthat Biden has authorized for the first time the transfer of anti-personnel mines to Ukraine. Something that, until now, had been ruled out due to the high risk of causing civilian casualties. Both the Russian and Ukrainian armies use these explosives in enormous quantities along the more than 1,000 kilometers of war front.
