On Sunday, 23 June 2024, ATACMS drone missiles killed six people and wounded over one hundred and fifty people in Sevastopol, a port city in Russia annexed Crimea. Among the dead were two children who were hit by the debris from the missiles.
Rocket fragments caused a forest fire and set a residential building alight; another missile had exploded over the city. Moreover, Russian air defences shot down thirty-three Ukrainian drones over Russia’s western Bryansk, Smolensk, Lipetsk and Tula regions without any reported casualties.
The Ukrainian Navy had also released photos saying it destroyed a warehouse in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region, used to launch and store Iranian-designed Shahed drones.
The attack on Sunday was in retaliation to Russia’s aerial bombing of Kharkiv the previous day, hitting a five-story residential building and killing three people. Following Russia’s attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Ukraine’s partners to bolster its air defences. ‘Modern air defence systems for Ukraine—such as Patriots, accelerated training of our pilots for F-16s, and most importantly, sufficient range for our weapons — are truly necessary,’ he said.
Russia blamed Ukraine and the U.S. for launching a ‘deliberate missile strike on civilians.’ The U.S., it said, supplied ATACMS missiles used in the attack, while U.S. military specialists had aimed the weapons and provided data for them. ‘You should ask my colleagues in Europe, and above all in Washington, the press secretaries, why their governments are killing Russian children,’ said Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman.
Russia summoned the U.S. Ambassador, Lynne Tracy. Shortly after, the foreign ministry issued a statement accusing Washington of ‘waging a hybrid war against Russia’, which has ‘actually become a party to the conflict.’ The attack, Russia warned, would ‘not go unpunished. Retaliatory measures will definitely follow.’
Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow has claimed that it is, in essence, fighting a proxy war with the West. Vladimir Putin presents the Ukraine war as a broader geo-political conflict with the U.S., which, he says, is ignoring Moscow’s interests and plotting to destabilise Russia to seize its natural resources. He has repeatedly warned of the risk of a broader war involving the world’s biggest nuclear powers, though he said Russia does not want a conflict with the U.S.-led NATO alliance.
President Joe Biden has repeatedly ruled out sending U.S. troops to fight in Ukraine. Shortly after the 2022 Russian invasion, he said that a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia would mean World War Three. Denying any intentions of destroying Russia, Biden and other Western leaders present the war in Ukraine as an imperial land grab.
The Russia-Ukraine war has sparked the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. In several interactions, Russian officials have said the conflict is now entering the most dangerous escalatory phase.
Technically, Washington prohibits Kyiv from striking Russia with the ATAC Missile System, which has a range of up to 186 miles (300 km), and other long-range U.S.-supplied weapons.
Since the United States allowed Ukraine to use some U.S. weapons against Russia, and Britain suggested Kyiv could do the same with British weapons, the Kremlin has sent several signals that it views the moves as a serious escalation.
By directly blaming the United States for attacking Crimea—which Russia annexed in 2014 and calls it Russian territory, although most of the world considers it to be part of Ukraine—Putin signals a severe escalation of conflict.
Putin ordered drills to deploy tactical nuclear weapons, suggesting Russia could deploy conventional missiles in striking distance of the United States and its allies, and sealed a mutual defence pact with North Korea. In a mirror response to the Western arming of Ukraine, Putin has also said Russia might supply weapons to North Korea.
‘If someone thinks it is possible to supply such weapons to a war zone to attack our territory and create problems for us, why don’t we have the right to supply weapons of the same class to regions of the world where there will be strikes on sensitive facilities of those (Western) countries?’ Putin said. ‘That is, the response can be asymmetric. We will think about it,’ he added.
The world’s greatest nuclear powers seem to be blinded by hubris. War is knocking on the door. One small misunderstanding could threaten global peace for decades and possibly wipe out humanity.
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