Moscow vows retaliation for Ukraine strikes with US-made missiles

Moscow threatened to retaliate after claiming to have downed eight U.S.-manufactured missiles fired from Ukraine toward Russia’s southwestern Belgorod region.

“These actions by the Kyiv regime, which is supported by Western curators, will be met with retaliation,” the Russian defense ministry said in a statement on Telegram Saturday, without specifying what countermeasures it intended to take. Ukraine has not commented on the strike.

The Kremlin views the use of these long-range ATACMS missiles — which are supplied to Kyiv by the United States and can reach targets up to 300 kilometres away — to carry out strikes deep inside Russian territory as a significant escalation in the war.

Since U.S. President Joe Biden authorized Ukraine to strike Russia with these missiles in November, Ukrainian forces have used them to hit remote targets on Russian soil on multiple occasions.

The Kremlin has responded to similar strikes in the past by firing an experimental medium-range hypersonic missile, nicknamed “Oreshnik,” which it claims cannot be intercepted by Western air defense systems.

Russian President Vladimir Putin in December vowed to accelerate the development of Oreshnik missiles, which Russia does not yet produce on an industrial scale.