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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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country would no longer pursue reconciliation with South Korea and called for rewriting the North’s constitution to eliminate the idea of shared statehood between the war-divided countries, state media said Tuesday.

The historic step to discard a decades-long pursuit of unification, which was based on a sense of national homogeneity shared by both Koreas, comes amid heightened tensions where the pace of both Kim’s weapons development and the South’s military exercises with the United States have intensified in a tit-for-tat.

North Korea also abolished the key government agencies that had been tasked with managing relations with South Korea in a decision made during a meeting of the country’s rubber-stamp parliament on Monday, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said.

The Supreme People’s Assembly said the two Koreas are locked in an “acute confrontation” and that it would be a serious mistake for the North to regard the South as a partner in diplomacy.

“The Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country, the National Economic Cooperation Bureau and the (Diamond Mountain) International Tourism Administration, tools which existed for (North-South) dialogue, negotiations and cooperation, are abolished,” the assembly said in a statement.

During a speech at the assembly, Kim blamed South Korea and the United States for raising tensions in the region, citing their expanded joint military exercises, deployments of U.S. strategic military assets, and their trilateral security cooperation with Japan as turning the Korean Peninsula into a dangerous war-risk zone, KCNA said.

Kim said it has become impossible for the North to pursue reconciliation and a peaceful reunification with the South, which he described as “top-class stooges” of outside powers obsessed with confrontational maneuvers.

He called for the assembly to rewrite the North’s constitution to define South Korea as the North’s “primary foe and invariable principal enemy.”

He also ordered the removal of past symbols of inter-Korean reconciliation, to “completely eliminate such concepts as ‘reunification,’ ‘reconciliation’ and ‘fellow countrymen’ from the national history of our republic.”

He specifically demanded cutting off cross-border railway sections and tearing down a monument in Pyongyang honoring a pursuit for reunification, which Kim described as an eyesore.

“It is the final conclusion drawn from the bitter history of the inter-Korean relations that we cannot go along the road of national restoration and reunification together,” he said.

Kim had made similar remarks during a year-end ruling party meeting, saying ties between the Koreas have become “fixed into the relations between two states hostile to each other.” At a political conference last week, he defined South Korea as the North’s “principal enemy” and threatened to annihilate it if provoked.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol during a Cabinet meeting in Seoul said Kim’s comments show the “anti-national and anti-historical” nature of the government in Pyongyang. Yoon said the South was maintaining firm defense readiness and would punish the North “multiple times hard” if it provokes it.

“(The North)’s fake peace tactic that threatened us to choose between ‘war’ and ‘peace’ no longer works,” Yoon said.

In his speech at the assembly, Kim reiterated that the North has no intention to unilaterally start a war, but has no intentions to avoid one either. Citing his growing military nuclear program, he said a nuclear conflict in the Korean Peninsula would end South Korea’s existence and bring “unimaginable disaster and defeat to the United States.”

The assembly said North Korea’s government would take “practical measures” to implement the decision to abolish the agencies handling dialogue and cooperation with the South.

The National Committee for Peaceful Reunification has been North Korea’s main agency handling inter-Korean affairs since its establishment in 1961.

The National Economic Cooperation Bureau and the Diamond Mountain International Tourism Administration had been set to handle joint economic and tourism projects between the Koreas during a brief period of reconciliation in the 2000s.

Such projects, including a jointly operated factory park in the North Korean border town of Kaesong and South Korean tours to the North’s Diamond Mountain resort, have been halted for years as relations between the rivals worsened over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

Those activities are currently banned under U.N. Security Council resolutions against the North that have tightened since 2016 as Kim accelerated his nuclear and missile tests.

Kim has further vowed to expand his nuclear arsenal and severed virtually all cooperation with the South. He has dialed up his weapons demonstrations to a record pace since the start of 2022, using the distraction created by Russia’s war on Ukraine to expand his military capabilities.

There’s also growing international concern over an alleged arms cooperation deal between North Korea and Russia. The United States and South Korea say North Korea has provided Russia with arms, including artillery and missiles, to help its fight in Ukraine.

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea said Tuesday it would launch its first military spy satellite in June and described space-based reconnaissance as crucial for monitoring the United States’ “reckless” military exercises with rival South Korea.

The statement came a day after North Korea notified Japan’s coast guard that the launch sometime between May 31 and June 11 may affect waters in the Yellow Sea, East China Sea and east of the Philippines’ Luzon Island. Japan’s defense minister warned its forces to shoot down the satellite or debris, if any entered Japanese territory.

In comments published by North Korean state media, senior military official Ri Pyong Chol criticized the combined U.S.-South Korean military exercises, which Pyongyang has long described as invasion rehearsals. He said North Korea considers space-based reconnaissance “indispensable” to monitor the military exercises.

Last week, the South Korean and U.S. militaries conducted large-scale live-fire drills near the border with North Korea as the first of five rounds of exercises marking 70 years since the establishment of their alliance.

Ri said the expanding U.S.-South Korean drills and other military activities underline their “sinister intention” to prepare for preemptive military action against North Korea. While Washington and Seoul describe their regular military exercises as defensive, they have expanded their training since 2022 to cope with the North’s evolving threats.

“The concerning security environment prevailing in the region owing to the dangerous military acts by the U.S. and its vassal forces requires us to secure as the most pressing task a reliable reconnaissance and information means capable of gathering information about the military acts of the enemy in real time,” Ri said.

South Korea has warned that North Korea will face consequences if it goes ahead with the satellite launch in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, which ban the North from conducting any launch using ballistic technology. Space-launch vehicles for satellites share core technologies with long-range missiles that are built to deliver warheads aimed at destroying intercontinental targets.

Japan’s coast guard issued a safety warning for ships that would be in the affected seas during the expected launch, citing risks of falling debris.

Last week, South Korea launched its first commercial-grade satellite, which experts say could provide Seoul with key technology and expertise to place its first military spy satellite into orbit later this year and build more powerful missiles.

Han Sung Geun, spokesperson of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a briefing that the South Korean and U.S. militaries were closely watching North Korea over the possible satellite launch and other provocative military moves. He did not provide specific assessments about the potential capabilities of the North Korean satellite and refused to say whether the South Korean military was preparing for the possibility that debris could fall in nearby waters.

Spy satellites are among an array of high-tech weapons systems North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has publicly vowed to develop. Other weapons systems on his wish list include solid-propellant ICBMs, nuclear-powered submarines, hypersonic missiles and multi-warhead missiles.

North Korea placed Earth-observation satellites in orbit in 2012 and 2016. However, there are questions about the capabilities of its satellites. Foreign experts say the earlier satellites never transmitted imagery back to North Korea, and analysts say the new device displayed in state media in recent weeks appeared too small and crudely designed to process and transfer high-resolution imagery.

Since the start of 2022, North Korea has test-fired about 100 missiles, including intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to reach the U.S. mainland and a slew of launches it described as simulated nuclear attacks on targets in South Korea. North Korea has said its intensified testing activity is meant to counter its rivals’ joint military exercises as it continues to use those drills as a pretext to advance its arsenal of nuclear-capable weapons.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Thursday said it has new evidence that Russia is looking again to North Korea for weapons to fuel the war in Ukraine, this time in a deal that would provide Pyongyang with needed food and other commodities in return.

It’s the latest accusation that Russia, desperate for weaponry and restricted by sanctions and export controls, is turning to “rogue” nations to help it continue to prosecute the 13-month-old war.

“As part of this proposed deal, Russia would receive over two dozen kinds of weapons and munitions from Pyongyang,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said. “We also understand that Russia is seeking to send a delegation to North Korea and that Russia is offering North Korea food in exchange for munitions.”

The administration has previously declassified intelligence to present evidence that Iran sold hundreds of attack drones to Russia over the summer and that the Wagner Group, a private Russian military company, has taken delivery of arms from North Korea to help bolster its forces as they fight side-by-side with Russian troops in Ukraine.

Experts believe the food situation in North Korea is the worst it has been under Kim Jong Un’s 11-year rule, but they still say they see no signs of imminent famine or mass deaths. Kim vowed to strengthen state control over agriculture and take a spate of other steps to increase grain production, North Korean state media reported earlier this month.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last month that U.S. intelligence suggested China was considering providing arms and ammunition to Russia, though White House officials have said they have yet to see evidence of Beijing following through with weapons delivery.

The publicizing of Russia’s efforts to get weapons from North Korea is just the latest example of the Biden administration loosening restrictions on intelligence findings and making them public over the course of the grinding war in Ukraine.

The administration has said it has sought to disseminate the intelligence findings so allies and the public remain clear-eyed about Moscow’s intent and Russian President Vladimir Putin thinks twice about his actions.

Earlier Thursday, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced sanctions against a Slovakian national, Ashot Mkrtychev, alleging he attempted to facilitate arms deals between Russia and North Korea.

Kirby said Mkrtychev is at the center of the new North Korea-Russia deal, which has yet to be consummated. He added that the U.S. does not have evidence that Mkrtychev was involved in the earlier transfer of weapons to Russia’s Wagner Group, whose mercenaries have been in the center of a monthslong battle for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

Between the end of 2022 and early 2023, Treasury said Mkrtychev worked with North Korean officials to obtain over two dozen kinds of weapons and munitions for Russia in exchange for commercial aircraft, raw materials and commodities to be sent to North Korea.

Mkrtychev worked with a Russian citizen to find commercial aircraft to delivers goods to North Korea in the exchange.

“Russia has lost over 9,000 pieces of heavy military equipment since the start of the war, and thanks in part to multilateral sanctions and export controls, Putin has become increasingly desperate to replace them,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement. “Schemes like the arms deal pursued by this individual show that Putin is turning to suppliers of last resort like Iran and the DPRK.”

North Korea, an outlier on the global stage, has sought to enhance relations with Russia since its invasion of Ukraine brought an avalanche of sanctions from the West and broad international condemnation.

Any arms deal with Russia would be a violation of U.N. resolutions that ban North Korea from exporting to or importing weapons from other countries.

North Korea is the only nation aside from Russia and Syria to recognize the independence of Russia-backed separatist territories, Donetsk and Luhansk, in eastern Ukraine.

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Thursday threatened the “toughest reaction” to the United States’ expanding joint military exercises with South Korea to counter the North’s growing nuclear weapons ambitions, claiming that the allies were pushing tensions to an “extreme red line.”

The statement by Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry came in response to comments by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who said in Seoul on Tuesday that the United States would increase its deployment of advanced military assets to the Korean Peninsula, including fighter jets and aircraft carriers, as it strengthens joint training and operational planning with South Korea.

South Korea’s Defense Ministry said the United States flew B-1B bombers and F-22 and F-35 fighter jets in an exercise with South Korean fighters on Wednesday above South Korea’s western waters, which it said was aimed at demonstrating the United States’ commitment to defend its ally with the full range of its military capabilities. The United States and South Korea are also planning to hold a simulation exercise this month aimed at sharpening their response if North Korea uses nuclear weapons.

In a statement attributed to an unidentified spokesperson of its Foreign Ministry, North Korea said the expansion of the allies’ drills is threatening to turn the Korean Peninsula into a “huge war arsenal and a more critical war zone.” The statement said the North is prepared to counter any short-term or long-term military challenge by the allies with the “most overwhelming nuclear force.”

“The military and political situation on the Korean Peninsula and in the region has reached an extreme red line due to the reckless military confrontational maneuvers and hostile acts of the U.S. and its vassal forces,” the spokesperson said.

North Korea for decades has described the United States’ combined military exercises with South Korea as rehearsals for a potential invasion, although the allies have described those drills as defensive.

North Korea last year ramped up its own weapons demonstrations as the allies resumed their large-scale training that had been downsized for years. North Korea’s actions included a slew of missile and artillery launches that it described as simulated nuclear attacks on South Korean and U.S. targets.

“DPRK will take the toughest reaction to any military attempt of the U.S. on the principle of ‘nuke for nuke and an all-out confrontation for an all-out confrontation!’” the North Korean spokesperson said, invoking the country’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“If the U.S. continues to introduce strategic assets into the Korean Peninsula and its surrounding area, the DPRK will make clearer its deterring activities without fail according to their nature,” the spokesperson said.

Austin’s visit came as South Korea seeks stronger assurances that the United States will swiftly and decisively use its nuclear capabilities to protect its ally in face of a North Korean nuclear attack.

South Korea’s security jitters have risen since North Korea test-fired dozens of missiles in 2022, including potentially nuclear-capable ones designed to strike targets in South Korea and the U.S. mainland. North Korea’s elevated testing activity has been punctuated by threats to preemptively use its nuclear weapons in a broad range of scenarios in which it perceives its leadership to be under threat, including conventional clashes or non-war situations.

In a news conference following their meeting, Austin said he and South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-Sup agreed to further expand their combined military exercises, including a resumption of live-fire demonstrations. They pledged to continue a “timely and coordinated” deployment of U.S. strategic assets to the region.

They said that their countries’ resumption of large-scale military drills last year effectively demonstrated their combined capabilities to deter North Korean aggression. The allies had downsized their training in recent years to create room for diplomacy with North Korea during the Trump administration and because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

South Korea and the United States have also been strengthening their security cooperation with Japan, which has included trilateral missile defense and anti-submarine warfare exercises in past months amid the provocative run in North Korean weapons tests.

“We deployed fifth-generation aircraft, F-22s and F-35s, we deployed a carrier strike group to visit the peninsula. You can look for more of that kind of activity going forward,” Austin said.

Tensions could further rise in coming months with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un doubling down on his nuclear ambitions.

During a political conference in December, Kim called for an “exponential increase” in nuclear warheads, mass production of battlefield tactical nuclear weapons targeting South Korea, and the development of more powerful long-range missiles designed to reach the U.S. mainland.

Experts say Kim’s nuclear push is aimed at forcing the United States to accept the idea of North Korea as a nuclear power and then negotiating badly needed economic concessions from a position of strength.

Nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea have been derailed since 2019 because of disagreements over a relaxation of U.S.-led economic sanctions against the North in exchange for steps by North Korea to wind down its nuclear weapons and missiles programs.

The North Korean spokesperson said Pyongyang isn’t interested in any contact or dialogue with the United States as long as it maintains its “hostile policy and confrontational line,” accusing Washington of maintaining sanctions and military pressure to force the North to “disarm itself unilaterally.”

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un presented new plans to further bolster his military power next year at a meeting of top political officials, state media reported Wednesday, in an indication he’ll continue his provocative run of weapons displays.

Kim’s statement came as animosities with rival South Korea rose sharply this week with the South accusing the North of flying drones across the border for the first time in five years. This year, North Korea already performed a record number of missile tests in what experts call an attempt to modernize its arsenal and increase its leverage in future dealings with the United States.

During the Tuesday session at the ongoing plenary meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party, Kim analyzed new security challenges in international politics and on the Korean Peninsula and clarified principles and directions to take in external relations and fights against enemies to protect national interests and sovereignty, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

Kim “set forth new key goals for bolstering the self-reliant defense capability to be pushed ahead in 2023 under the multilaterally changing situation,” KCNA said, without elaborating.

Some observers say the new goals could be related to Kim’s drive to expand his nuclear arsenal and acquire high-tech weapons systems such as multi-warhead missiles, a more agile long-range weapon, a spy satellite and advanced drones. They say Kim would eventually aim to use his boosted nuclear power to force his rivals to accept the North as a legitimate nuclear state, a status he thinks is essential in getting international sanctions lifted.

On Monday, South Korea’s military fired warning shots and launched fighter jets and helicopters, after detecting what it called five North Korean drones that violated the South’s airspace. South Korea also flew three drones across the border in response, Defense Minister Lee Jong-Sup told lawmakers Wednesday.

The military apologized for failing to shoot down the drones and President Yoon Suk Yeol called for stronger air defenses and high-tech stealth drones to better monitor North Korea.

In a meeting with his advisers Wednesday, Yoon said South Korea must resolutely retaliate against any provocation by North Korea, saying that will be the most powerful means to deter the North. Yoon also said South Korea must not be intimidated by North Korea’s nuclear weapons, according to his spokesperson, Kim Eun-hye.

Some experts say the North Korean drone flights might have been designed to test South Korean and U.S. readiness and nullify a previous inter-Korean agreement to reduce tensions at front-line areas. They say North Korea likely assessed its drones as a cheap yet effective method to cause security jitters and a domestic divide in South Korea.

Yoon, a conservative who took office in May, said Tuesday that South Korea has had little anti-drone training since 2017, a year when his liberal predecessor Moon Jae-in was inaugurated. In an apparent effort to blame the allegedly lax air defenses on Moon’s engagement policy toward North Korea, Yoon said, “I think our people must have seen well how dangerous a policy relying on the North’s good faith and (peace) agreements would be.”

Moon’s liberal opposition Democratic Party accused the president of trying to shift blame.

Under a five-year arms buildup plan announced Wednesday, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said it’ll push to bolster its so-called three-axis system — preemptive strike, missile defense and retaliatory attack capabilities — to cope with North Korean nuclear threats. To do so, it said it’ll procure more stealth fighter jets and submarines capable of firing ballistic missiles, operate additional interceptor missiles and radars, and develop more powerful, precision-guided weapons.

It said South Korea will also procure diverse types of drones to strengthen its surveillance capacities.

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