Moscow says that Ukraine has fired the first US ATACMS rockets at Russia

Russia says that Ukraine has used ATACMS missiles that were sent by the US against Russia for the first time.

Moscow said that Ukraine used US ATACMS missiles to attack Russian soil for the first time on Tuesday. This was seen as a big escalation by Russia on the 1,000th day of the war.

Russia said its forces shot down five of the six missiles that were fired at a military base in the Bryansk region. One missile’s fragments hit the base, but did not hurt anyone or damage it.

Ukraine said that it had hit a Russian weapons storage area about 70 miles (110 km) inside of Russia and set off other blasts. It didn’t say what kinds of guns were used.

This week, President Joe Biden gave Ukraine permission to use medium-range US missiles for these kinds of attacks. Moscow has called this a “escalation” that would make the US a direct participant in the war and would lead to immediate response.

At the time, there were plans for vigils to remember 1,000 days of war. Troops were tired at the front, and bombs were hitting Kyiv. There were also questions about the future of Western support as Donald Trump goes back to the White House.

They say that US weapons can help Ukraine defend an area of land it took as a bargaining chip in Russia, but they probably won’t be able to change the course of the 33-month-old war.

When Trump takes office again in two months, he has promised to end the war quickly without saying how. This could mean bigger changes in how the US acts.

Leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy told the house that the “decisive moments” of the war would happen in the next year.

“At this point in the war, the winner is still unknown.” Whether it’s us against the enemy or the enemy against us Ukrainians and Europeans. And everyone around the world who wants to be free and not be ruled by a tyrant.

At night on Tuesday, there was going to be a memorial service with candles.

Over six million Ukrainians have fled their country as refugees, and the population has dropped by a quarter since Vladimir Putin, the head of the Kremlin, ordered the invasion by land, sea, and air. This started Europe’s worst war since World War II.

Military losses have been terrible, but the exact numbers of deaths are still a closely guarded secret. Based on spy accounts, the West thinks that hundreds of thousands of people have been killed or hurt on each side.

Our fight for survival takes place in the freezing ditches of Donetsk and the burning steppes of Kherson, while shells, hail, and anti-aircraft guns lash out. That’s what Ukraine’s top leader Oleksandr Syrkyi wrote on Telegram.

It feels like things are getting worse as Moscow and Kyiv try to get better places on the ground before they talk.

Russia has now sent in 11,000 North Korean troops, which it says have fought with Ukrainian forces that have taken over part of Russia’s Kursk region. These troops are in addition to the Iranian attack drones and North Korean artillery shells and ballistic missiles that were already there. Zelenskiy said that North Korea could send a hundred thousand troops.

In the east, Russia is still moving forward village by village. On Tuesday, they claimed another Ukrainian town. As winter set in, Moscow continued its attack from the air on Ukraine’s power grid on Sunday, firing 120 missiles and 90 drones in the biggest strike since August.

Moscow is against the US’s choice to let Ukraine use weapons to attack deep into its own land, saying that this would make the US a direct enemy. Putin signed a new nuclear doctrine on Tuesday that was likely meant to be a message to Washington. It lowers the conditions under which Russia could use nuclear weapons to include reacting to attacks that threaten its territory.

Zelenskiy said that Ukraine should try to talk out the war next year if possible. But in public, the gap between the enemies’ bargaining positions has not grown.

For a long time, Kyiv has wanted Russia to leave all occupied land and for the West to provide security promises on par with NATO’s mutual defense pact to stop Russia from attacking again.

The Kremlin says that Ukraine should give up all of its plans to join NATO and pull all of its troops out of the areas that Russia says it has taken over since its attack.

With a new US government, European countries are getting ready to play a bigger defense role for the continent.

The foreign ministers of Germany, France, Poland, Italy, Spain, and Britain said in a joint statement on Tuesday that Moscow’s growing range and size of hybrid actions against NATO and EU countries pose a major security risk.