Biden’s shift in policy added an uncertain, new factor to the conflict on the eve of the 1,000-day milestone since Russia began its full-scale invasion in 2022.

It also came as a Russian ballistic missile with cluster munitions struck a residential area of Sumy in northern Ukraine, killing 11 people and injuring 84 others. Another missile barrage sparked apartment fires in the southern port of Odesa, killing at least 10 people and injuring 43, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said.

Washington is easing limits on what Ukraine can strike with its American-made Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMs, U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Sunday, after months of ruling out such a move over fears of escalating the conflict and bringing about a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.

The Kremlin was swift in its condemnation.

“It is obvious that the outgoing administration in Washington intends to take steps, and they have been talking about this, to continue adding fuel to the fire and provoking further escalation of tensions around this conflict,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

The scope of the new firing guidelines isn’t clear. But the change came after the U.S., South Korea and NATO said North Korean troops are in Russia and apparently are being deployed to help Moscow drive Ukrainian troops from Russia’s Kursk border region.

Biden’s decision almost entirely was triggered by North Korea’s entry into the fight, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, and was made just before he left for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru.

Russia also is slowly pushing Ukraine’s outnumbered army backward in the eastern Donetsk region. It has also conducted a devastating aerial campaign against civilian areas in Ukraine.

Peskov referred journalists to a statement from President Vladimir Putin in September in which he said allowing Ukraine to target Russia would significantly raise the stakes.

It would change “the very nature of the conflict dramatically,” Putin said at the time. “This will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia.”

Peskov claimed that Western countries supplying longer-range weapons also provide targeting services to Kyiv. “This fundamentally changes the modality of their involvement in the conflict,” he said.

Putin warned in June that Moscow could provide longer-range weapons to others to strike Western targets if NATO allowed Ukraine to use its allies’ arms to attack Russian territory. After signing a treaty with North Korea, Putin issued an explicit threat to provide weapons to Pyongyang, noting Moscow could mirror Western arguments that it’s up to Ukraine to decide how to use them.

“The Westerners supply weapons to Ukraine and say: ‘We do not control anything here anymore and it does not matter how they are used,’” Putin has said. “Well, we can also say: ‘We supplied something to someone — and then we do not control anything.’ And let them think about it.”

Putin has also reaffirmed Moscow’s readiness to use nuclear weapons if it sees a threat to its sovereignty.

Biden’s move will “mean the direct involvement of the United States and its satellites in military action against Russia, as well as a radical change in the essence and nature of the conflict,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said.

President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office Jan. 20, has raised uncertainty about whether his administration would continue military support to Ukraine. He has also vowed to end the war quickly.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a muted response Sunday to the approval that he and his government have been requesting for over a year, adding, “The missiles will speak for themselves.”

“The longer Ukraine can strike, the shorter the war will be,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Monday ahead of a U.N. Security Council meeting marking the 1,000th-day milestone.

Asked whether the United Kingdom would follow the United States in authorizing use of its longer-range missiles, U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who chaired the meeting, declined to comment. He said doing so would risk “operational security and can only play into the hands of Putin.”

Consequences of the new policy are uncertain. ATACMS, which have a range of about 300 kilometers (190 miles), can reach far behind the about 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line in Ukraine, but they have relatively short range compared with other types of ballistic and cruise missiles.

The policy change came “too late to have a major strategic effect,” said Patrick Bury, a senior associate professor in security at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom.

“The ultimate kind of impact it will have is to probably slow down the tempo of the Russian offensives which are now happening,” he said, adding that Ukraine could strike targets in Kursk or logistics hubs or command headquarters.

Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, agreed the U.S. move would not alter the war’s course, noting Ukraine “would need large stockpiles of ATACMS, which it doesn’t have and won’t receive because the United States’ own supplies are limited.”

On a political level, the move “is a boost to the Ukrainians and it gives them a window of opportunity to try and show that they are still viable and worth supporting” as Trump prepares to take office, said Matthew Savill, director of Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

The cue for the policy change was the arrival in Russia of North Korean troops, according to Glib Voloskyi, an analyst at the CBA Initiatives Center, a Kyiv-based think tank.

“This is a signal the Biden administration is sending to North Korea and Russia, indicating that the decision to involve North Korean units has crossed a red line,” he said.

Russian lawmakers and state media bashed the West for what they called an escalatory step, threatening a harsh response.

“Biden, apparently, decided to end his presidential term and go down in history as ‘Bloody Joe,’” lawmaker Leonid Slutsky told Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of parliament, called it “a very big step toward the start of World War III” and an attempt to “reduce the degree of freedom for Trump.”

Russian newspapers offered similar predictions of doom. “The madmen who are drawing NATO into a direct conflict with our country may soon be in great pain,” Rossiyskaya Gazeta said.

Some NATO allies welcomed the move.

President Andrzej Duda of Poland, which borders Ukraine, praised the decision as a “very important, maybe even a breakthrough moment“ in the war.

“In the recent days, we have seen the decisive intensification of Russian attacks on Ukraine, above all, those missile attacks where civilian objects are attacked, where people are killed, ordinary Ukrainians,” Duda said.

Easing restrictions on Ukraine was “a good thing,” said Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna of Russian neighbor Estonia.

“We have been saying that from the beginning — that no restrictions must be put on the military support,” he told senior European Union diplomats in Brussels. “And we need to understand that situation is more serious (than) it was even maybe like a couple of months ago.”

But Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, known for his pro-Russian views, described Biden’s decision as “an unprecedented escalation” that would prolong the war.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The top U.S. military officer said Wednesday that he tried to reach out to his Russian counterpart in the aftermath of the missile explosions in Poland, but wasn’t able to get through.

Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said his staff tried to get Russia’s top-ranking military official Gen. Valery Gerasimov on the phone to discuss the incident with “no success.”

Milley didn’t elaborate on the efforts, but the lack of communications raises concerns about high-level U.S.-Russian communications in a crisis. A strike against Poland, a NATO member, could have risked a larger conflict if it turned out that Russia had launched the strike.

The U.S. and other top leaders now say they believe the strike was probably launched by Ukrainian air defenses to defend against a Russian missile bombardment. But uncertainty swirled for hours. Several U.S. defense officials said it isn’t unusual for Gerasimov to not be available for a call.

The lack of communication is worrisome, especially given the potential implications of the strike, said John Tierney, executive director of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington.

Open lines of communication “are vital if we are to avoid the risk of conflict caused by misconception, miscalculations or mistake,” Tierney said. “It is unsettling to learn from General Milley that his counterpart was unreachable or not willing to engage when an explosion occurred in Poland.”

Milley did talk to his military counterparts in Ukraine and Poland as the governments worked quickly to assess whether the missile that killed two people in Poland had been launched by Russia or Ukraine.

The conversation came as Milley has said that Russia’s recent defeat in the key southern city Kherson and the possible slowdown of military operations in the winter could provide an opportunity to negotiate.

“You want to negotiate at a time when you’re at your strength, and your opponent is at weakness,” Milley said at a Pentagon briefing Wednesday. “The Russian military is suffering tremendously,” he said, citing large losses of Russian tanks, fighting vehicles, fighter jets and helicopters.

If fighting slows down, Milley said that may become “a window” for talks about a political solution.

Both he and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that they expect Ukraine to keep fighting through the winter, and the U.S. and its allies will continue to provide more support and weapons. And it will be up to Ukraine to determine any negotiation plans.

“We’ve said repeatedly that the Ukrainians are going to decide that and not us. And we will support them for as long as it takes,” said Austin, who was also at the briefing.

The missile that landed in Poland Tuesday was launched during the “largest wave of missiles that we’ve seen since the beginning of the war,” Austin said. On Tuesday Russia launched as many as 100 missiles at Ukraine as Moscow intensifies its airstrikes following significant ground losses.

Milley said it’s unlikely that either side can gain a military victory quickly. He said the chance of Russia, which currently controls about 20% of Ukraine, overrunning the entire country “is close to zero.” And, he added, the “task of militarily kicking the Russians physically out of Ukraine is a very difficult task. And it’s not going to happen in the next couple of weeks unless the Russian army completely collapses, which is unlikely.”

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