Ukraine war live: Russia vows response over US missiles as 1,000 days of war clocked

Chinese and Russian foreign ministers discussed bilateral ties, the conflict in Ukraine, and the situation on the Korean peninsula on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Brazil, they said today.

“We are truly at an unprecedented stage in the development of our strategic relations of a comprehensive partnership,” Russia’s Sergei Lavrov told China’s Wang Yi, according to a post on the Russian foreign ministry’s Telegram channel.

Mr Wang said Beijing is willing to work with Russia to further strengthen bilateral “comprehensive strategic coordination”, the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement.

The “two sides also exchanged views on the Ukraine crisis and the situation on the Korean Peninsula”, it added without providing further details.

China and Russia have held a series of bilateral meetings since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine 1,000 days ago. The war isolated Moscow from Kyiv’s Western allies, bringing waves of sanctions on its politicians and businesses, but pushed it closer to China.

Russia is ready to normalise its relations with the United States, but will not “tango alone”, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told TASS state news agency in remarks published today.

“Russia, as our president has said, is open to normalisation,” TASS cited Mr Peskov, a close aide of Vladimir Putin, as saying. “But we cannot tango alone. And we are not going to do it.”

Joe Biden’s decision to let Ukraine strike targets inside Russia with US-made long-range missiles is an “escalation” of the conflict, Moscow said on Monday as it warned use of the weapons would trigger a “tangible” response.

The Kremlin reacted with fury after the US president eased limits on what targets Kyiv can strike using the American-made Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS.

My colleague Alastair Jamieson has the full report:

The Kremlin warned that president Joe Biden’s decision to let Ukraine strike targets inside Russia with US-supplied longer-range missiles adds “fuel to the fire” of the war and would escalate international tensions even higher.

The Kremlin was swift in its condemnation. “It is obvious that the outgoing administration in Washington intends to take steps, and they have been talking about this, to continue adding fuel to the fire and provoking further escalation of tensions around this conflict,” spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

Mr Peskov claimed that Western countries supplying longer-range weapons also provide targeting services to Kyiv. “This fundamentally changes the modality of their involvement in the conflict,” he said.

Mr Peskov referred journalists to a statement from president Vladimir Putin in September in which he said allowing Ukraine to target Russia would significantly raise the stakes. It would change “the very nature of the conflict dramatically,” Mr Putin said at the time. “This will mean that Nato countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia.”

The US will announce additional security assistance for Ukraine in coming days, the US ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said as the United Nations marked 1,000 days since Russia’s invasion of the country.

Ms Thomas-Greenfield said supporting Ukraine in the US Congress and beyond could not and should not be a partisan issue, and that standing up for democracy and human rights was “above petty politics” and would outlast any one leader.

Ukraine marked 1,000 days today since Russia’s full-scale invasion, with weary troops battling on numerous fronts, Kyiv besieged by frequent drone and missile strikes, and officials preparing for Donald Trump to reclaim the White House in January.

In a boost for the beleaguered country, US president Joe Biden gave the green light for US missiles to be used against targets deeper inside Russia, potentially limiting its options to launch attacks and supply the front.

But the dramatic shift in policy may be reversed when Mr Trump returns to the White House in January, and military experts cautioned that it would not be enough on its own to change the course of the 33-month-old war.

Thousands of Ukrainian citizens have died, over 6 million live as refugees abroad and the population has fallen by a quarter since Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion by land, sea and air that began Europe’s biggest conflict since the Second World War.

Military losses have been catastrophic, although they remain closely guarded secrets. Public Western estimates based on intelligence reports vary widely, but most say hundreds of thousands have been killed or wounded on each side.

Tragedy has touched families in every corner of Ukraine, where military funerals are commonplace in major cities and far-flung villages, and people are exhausted by sleepless nights of air raid sirens and anguish.

Now the return of Mr Trump, who has vowed to end the fighting quickly – without saying how – calls into question the future of US military aid and the united Western front against Mr Putin, and raises the prospect of talks to end the war.

Changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine have been drawn up and just need to be formalised, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s press secretary, told the TASS state news agency in remarks published today.

“They have already been practically formulated. They will be formalised as necessary,” TASS cited Mr Peskov, a close aide of Vladimir Putin, as saying.

“What took you so long, Joe?” President Biden’s belated decision to allow Ukrainian armed forces to deploy a key US-supplied missile system deeper into Russian territory will be a welcome boost to morale in Kyiv, as well as being of some material help. It should also prompt the British and French to follow suit and to generally encourage other allies to boost their support for Ukraine.

However, it is painful to reflect on how much more effective this change in tactics would have been had the move been made, say, a year or two ago. In hindsight, President Vladimir Putin’s veiled threats about escalation proved to be empty – and now no one thinks he’s about to bomb New York, Paris or London in revenge for the West giving the Ukrainians more firepower.

As it is, in the dying days of the Biden administration, it seems unlikely to be the kind of “game changer” that President Zelensky and his long-suffering people have been virtually begging from the West since the earliest days of this conflict.

Read The Independent’s full editorial here: