Russia said Ukraine fired US-supplied ATACMS missiles into Russian territory for the first time, in what would mark a significant widening of the war’s reach.
According to the Russian defence ministry, the strike hit an ammunition depot in Bryansk region near the border with Ukraine. Moscow said five missiles were shot down and that one caused damage after fragments started a fire at a military facility. Two US officials told the BBC that initial indications suggested Russia intercepted only two of around eight missiles fired. The BBC said it could not independently verify the conflicting figures.
The reporting points to a politically charged first use of a weapon with much greater range than the systems Ukraine had been using previously. ATACMS can reach up to 300km and are difficult to intercept because of their speed. US officials confirmed use of the system to CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, but Ukraine itself did not comment.
The strike came a day after Washington gave permission for such attacks, according to the BBC report. That timing mattered because it linked the battlefield development to a broader shift in US policy. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, used the episode to accuse Washington of escalation and said Moscow would treat the move as a renewed face of the Western war against Russia.
At the same time, the Kremlin approved changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine, setting out new conditions under which Moscow would consider using its arsenal. The revised doctrine said an attack from a non-nuclear state backed by a nuclear power would be treated as a joint assault. The BBC report placed the missile launch and the doctrine change in the same week, underscoring how quickly the confrontation was intensifying in both military and rhetorical terms.
Ukraine has already used ATACMS in Russian-occupied parts of its own territory for more than a year. The significance of the reported strike was that it appeared to extend the missile’s use deeper into Russian soil, including territory beyond areas held by Ukraine. The BBC also noted that Ukrainian forces hold more than 1,000 square kilometres in the Kursk region and that the missiles could be used there as well.
Russia said the fire from falling debris was quickly extinguished and that there were no casualties. Ukraine’s military earlier said it had struck an ammunition warehouse in Bryansk and reported 12 secondary explosions, though it did not specify whether ATACMS had been used.
The result is a familiar wartime pattern: competing claims over the same event, strategic messaging on both sides, and little immediate clarity about the precise damage. What is clear from the evidence in hand is that the missiles were used, Moscow says the target was inside its own territory, and Washington’s new authorization has now translated into an attack Russia is already framing as a major escalation.
