With under 9 weeks left in his presidency, Biden may have set the stage for nuclear war.
Before relinquishing power in January, President Joe Biden may turn America's proxy war with Russia into a direct nuclear conflict.
Elements of the Biden administration, various lawmakers from both major parties, Ukrainian officials, and others appear convinced that attacks on Russia using American long-range missiles might put Kyiv in a better bargaining position should the Eastern nations ever sit down to negotiate an end to the war, which has lasted over 1,000 days and claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
Critics have suggested not only that the move might protract the war, which the majority of Ukrainians now want to end with immediate negotiations, but that it might trigger a nuclear holocaust or at the very least prevent — by design — President-elect Donald Trump from brokering peace upon taking office.
Missiles fired
After authorizing Ukraine's use of long-range missile systems against targets in Russia — a move long resisted by U.S. officials concerned about escalation and identified by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a trigger for war between Washington and Moscow — Kyiv launched six U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile System missiles Tuesday morning at a weapons depot in Karachev, a Russian city 70 miles inside the country, in the Bryansk region.
'We must not fear doing more now.'
According to CNN, Russian air defenses allegedly shot down five of the ATACMS supersonic missiles, and the sixth was damaged. Pieces of the damaged missile rained down near a military facility, causing a fire but resulting in neither death nor damage.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed the attempted missile strikes and suggested that these and subsequent long-range missile strikes would be interpreted as U.S. military actions.
Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, said in a statement, "The [Russian] president mentioned this several times. If long-range missiles are going to be applied from Ukraine into Russian territory, it will also mean that they are operated by American experts, military experts, and we will be taking this as a qualitatively new phase of the Western war against Russia and will react accordingly."
