Ukraine-Russia newest: Putin’s forces hit with first ATACMS long-range missiles after US choice, Moscow says

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.

In a secret factory in central Russia, engineers are manufacturing hundreds of decoy drones meant to overwhelm Ukrainian defences as they try to protect against a horrific new weapon.

The plant in Russia’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone recently started churning out thermobaric drones alongside the decoys, an Associated Press investigation has found. The thermobaric warheads create a vortex of high pressure and heat that can penetrate thick walls. They suck out all the oxygen in their path, and have a fearsome reputation because of the injuries inflicted even outside the initial blast site: Collapsed lungs, crushed eyeballs, brain damage.

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Kyiv said on Tuesday it struck a Russian arsenal near the town of Karachev in the Bryansk region, over 70 miles (110 km) from Ukraine, in what two Ukrainian media outlets reported was a first strike with U.S.-supplied ATACMS missiles.

There was no official confirmation from Ukraine about what weapon was used. The military’s general staff and military intelligence agency did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

Kyiv was granted permission by the White House to use US supplied weapons to strike deeper into Russia.

Ukrainian outlets Forbes Ukraine and RBC Ukraine cited unnamed sources as saying that ATACMS had been used for the first time to conduct the strike in Karachev.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday that Ukraine fired six U.S.-made ATACMs missiles at Russia’s Bryansk region.

In a statement carried by Russian news agencies, the ministry said it shot down five of them and damaged one more.

The fragments fell on the territory of an unspecified military facility, the ministry said. The announcement comes shortly after Washington lifted restrictions on Ukraine using U.S.-made longer-range missiles to strike Russia.

Ukraine has struck Russia territory with the American long-range ATACMS ballistic missiles for the first time, according to a source within the Ukrainian military.

The strike targeted a military facility near the city of Karachev in the Bryansk region of Russia overnight on Tuesday, the source told RBC-Ukraine.

“Indeed, for the first time, we used ATACMS to strike Russian territory. The strike was carried out against a facility in the Bryansk region, and it was successfully hit,” the source said.

Karachev is near Bryansk, which is around 120 kilometres from the Ukrainian border.

The number of North Korean troops inside Russia could grow up to 100,000, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday.

“Now, Putin has brought 11,000 North Korean troops to Ukraine borders. This contingent may grow to 100,000,” Mr Zelensky said in a virtual address to the European Parliament.

Kyiv and Western allies say North Korea has been supplying Russia with weaponry and troops, as Russian president Vladimir Putin’s forces seeks to seize as much territory as possible to strengthen Moscow’s negotiating position when US president-elect Donald Trump takes power.

North Korean troops have already engaged in combat operations against Ukrainian forces, South Korea’s spy agency said last week.

Russia has arrested two suspects who are believed to have assassinated a senior naval officer with a car bomb in Crimea last week, investigators said on Tuesday.

Valery Trankovsky, a naval captain and the chief of staff of the 41st brigade of Russia’s missile ships in the Black Sea, died in the bombing in the city of Sevastopol.

A Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) source told Reuters it was responsible for the operation.

The two suspects are a 47-year-old man, accused of making and detonating the bomb, and a 38-year-old woman accused of carrying out surveillance on the target.

In a video published by Russian military news outlet Zvezda, the pair were shown confessing the crime. Their faces were blurred and it was not clear if they were speaking freely or under duress.

Time was when optimists responded to the imminence of world war with a cocky: “It’ll all be over by Christmas…”

Since President Biden’s foreign policy team leaked his decision yesterday to let Ukraine use US-supplied long-range missiles to strike military targets within Russia, pessimists have been warning that World War Three will start by Christmas.

Mark Almond writes:

Two undersea internet cables in the Baltic Sea were damaged on Sunday and Monday in what must be seen as an act of sabotage, the German defence minister has said.

A pair of fibre-optic communicatons cables connecting Germany to Findland and Lithuania to Sweden were severed. A joint statement from Finland and Germany said it “immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage”.

German defence minister Boris Pistorius said before a meeting with his EU counterparts on Tuesday that “no one believes” the cables were cut accidentally.

He added: “I also don’t want to believe in versions that these were anchors that accidentally caused damage over these cables.

“Therefore we have to state, without knowing specifically who it came from, that it is a ‘hybrid’ action. And we also have to assume, without knowing it yet, that it is sabotage.”