Russia says it will respond to use of long-range US missiles by Ukraine

​​​​​​​ISTANBUL

Russia’s top diplomat said Tuesday his country will respond to Ukraine’s alleged use of long-range US ATACMS ballistic missiles against Russian territory amid earlier claims by Moscow that it downed some of the missiles above one of its border regions.

The Russian Defense Ministry claimed it downed six of the missiles above the region of Bryansk. If true, it would represent the first attack by Kyiv using the long-range US ATACMS missiles since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war 1,000 days ago.

“If long-range missiles are launched from Ukraine to Russian territory, this will mean that they are controlled by American military experts. We will respond accordingly,” Sergey Lavrov said at a news conference following a G20 summit in Rio.

Expressing that Russia proceeds from the idea that such missiles cannot be used without the participation of US military specialists, Lavrov said Moscow will regard the launch of the missiles as a “qualitatively new stage of the West's war against Russia.”

Lavrov said Russia is strictly committed to the position that nuclear weapons are a means to prevent any nuclear war, indicating that the West will become familiar with Moscow’s updated nuclear doctrine.

“What the president (Vladimir Putin) announced publicly a little over a month ago has already been enshrined in law. And I hope that they (in the West) will read this doctrine. And not the way they read the UN Charter, seeing only what they need, but the doctrine in its entirety and interconnectedness,” said Lavrov.

He indicated that he does not know if reports are true about Washington’s permission for Ukraine to use its long-range weapons to strike deep inside Russia.​​​​​​​

“Our nuclear doctrine update does not introduce anything that the West does not know, and does not add anything that would differ from American doctrinal documents on what to do in terms of nuclear weapons,” he added.

Earlier Tuesday, Putin signed a decree approving Moscow's updated nuclear doctrine, almost two months after he announced changes in his address at the biannual standing conference on nuclear deterrence on Sept. 25.