CBS News
Russian officials say Biden decision to let Ukraine fire missiles deep into Russia could lead to world war
President Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to fire U.S.-made and supplied missiles deeper into Russia — a major policy shift announced over the weekend after months of intense lobbying by Kyiv — has drawn a furious response from Moscow. While there was no immediate reaction directly from the man who launched the nearly three-year war on his neighboring nation, lawmakers aligned with President Vladimir Putin in Russia said Monday that the move was unacceptable and warned it could lead to a third world war.
Mr. Biden authorized Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to use American-made missiles with a range of almost 200 miles, known as ATACMS, to strike deeper inside Russian territory than the Ukrainians have to date.
So far, Ukraine’s attacks beyond the immediate border region inside Russia have been limited to non-U.S. — and much less potent— weapons such as explosive drones. ATACMS are far more destructive and harder to shoot down as they head for their programmed targets.
Attila Husejnow/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty
Zelenskyy’s government had been pushing Washington for permission to use the missiles for long-range attacks for some time but the Biden administration had been reluctant given concerns about potentially escalating the war.
Over the weekend, however, the calculus apparently changed. The decision came almost 1,000 days into the full-scale war in Ukraine, and with Mr. Biden about two months away from handing over the White House keys to President-elect Trump, who’s seen as far less supportive of Ukraine’s ambitions of hanging onto all of its Russian-occupied territory.
It also came as Russia hit Ukraine with a devastating missile attack, highlighting Ukraine’s desperate desire for the ability to target Russian weapons systems deeper inside the country before they’re launched, which Zelenskyy has stressed for more than a year.
Many of the Russian rockets launched Sunday targeted energy infrastructure but a ballistic missile carrying cluster munitions also struck a residential part of the northern city of Sumy, killing 11 people, including two children, and leaving more than 80 others wounded. Fresh strikes hit apartment buildings in the southern city of Odesa on Monday, killing at least eight people including a child, regional authorities said.
Residents in Sumy were targeted as they slept, and Ukrainian officials called the Sunday missile and drone salvo one of the largest Russian attacks since the start of the war.
With the change in policy from the outgoing administration in Washington, Ukrainian forces will be able to retaliate harder, reaching further into Russia than ever before. Ukrainian forces have launched drone attacks into Russian territory, including targeting Moscow, for months, but with limited effect.
Zelenskyy welcomed the change in U.S. policy, saying “strikes are not made with words… The missiles will speak for themselves.”
But Ukraine’s war-time leader also appeared to acknowledge the change in tack in Washington that Trump’s second swearing-in will bring, with a far greater emphasis expected on striking a negotiated truce than on defending Ukraine’s sovereign territory from unilateral annexation by Russia.
“It is certain that the war will end sooner with the policies of the team that will now lead the White House. This is their approach, their promise to their citizens,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with a Ukrainian news outlet, adding that Ukraine “must do everything so that this war ends next year, ends through diplomatic means.”
In Moscow, meanwhile, senior lawmaker Leonid Slutsky slammed Mr. Biden, accusing him of deciding “to end his presidential term and go down in history as ‘Bloody Joe’.”
Senator Vladimir Dzhabarov, meanwhile, told Russia’s state-run Tass news agency that Biden’s decision represented “a very big step toward the beginning of the third world war.”
The official newspaper of the Russian state, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, warned “the madmen who are drawing NATO into a direct conflict with our country may soon be in great pain.”
Putin had personally warned against the eventuality previously, issuing a warning in September that U.S. permission for Ukraine to fire American-supplied long-range missiles at his country, “would mean that NATO countries, the United States, and European countries, are parties to the war in Ukraine.”
But Putin himself has dramatically raised the stakes in the war since then, by overseeing the deployment of at least 11,000 North Korean troops to fight alongside Russian forces. They’ve joined the battle in Russia’s western Kursk region, a significant portion of which Ukrainian troops occupied earlier this year in a surprise offensive.
The parameters of the permission granted to Ukraine for the use of the ATACMS haven’t been confirmed, but according to reports, they include — and may be limited to — Ukraine using the missiles to attack Russian defensive positions in Kursk.
James Nixey, who heads the Russia and Eurasia program at the London-based Chatham House think tank, said in an analysis Monday that the change in policy from Washington was “not a game changer,” especially if it included a limitation on where Ukraine can use the ATACMS.
“The relaxation of range limits for Ukraine’s usage of US ATACMS follows the overall pattern of America’s approach to this war: to make sure Ukraine cannot inflict significant damage on Russia… but to allow small increases in hardware provision and their usage over extended periods of time,” he said. “If it is true that the authorization for usage extends only to the Kursk region (and is therefore primarily directed at North Korean troops); then, again, this fits the pattern, and means the overall effects on the war will be negligible.”
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Family of American woman killed in Israeli-occupied West Bank says U.S. response “even more heartbreaking”
More than two months after American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was killed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, allegedly by a member of Israel’s security forces, her family tells CBS News their faith in the United States has been shattered due to the lack of any independent criminal investigation.
Eygi’s husband Hamid Ali said he was appalled by the reaction of the Biden administration.
“I would hope that the U.S. government is able to implement its own law in this case and withhold, at the very least, funding from its own taxpayers that went to this unit or this soldier that killed one of its own citizens,” he told CBS News.
Family handout
Neither the Biden administration nor any U.S. law enforcement agency has announced an investigation into Eygi’s killing. The State Department told CBS News it continues pushing to see the results of a “full, transparent” Israeli probe.
Eygi’s sister, Özden Bennett, said the Biden administration’s response had made the grieving process “even more heartbreaking and painful.”
“No family should have to experience this,” she told CBS News, with tears in her eyes.
Bennett said that growing up in the U.S., she had developed an idealistic vision of the country and its values but her sister’s death “shattered” those ideas.
“It feels like they don’t care about all U.S. citizens the same way,” she said. “The U.S. government, or the Biden administration particularly, not opening an investigation makes us question why it is not being equally treated.”
Witnesses, her family, and the group Eygi had joined at a protest have said the U.S.-Turkish dual national was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper as she stood under a tree in the West Bank city of Nablus.
She was shot not long after joining a protest organized by the International Solidarity Movement, at which the Israel Defense Forces said some demonstrators had thrown projectiles at troops. Witnesses said she was shot after the protest, and away from where it had taken place.
The IDF said an initial inquiry found it was “highly likely that she was hit indirectly and unintentionally” by a member of the Israeli security forces. The IDF told CBS News on Thursday that it was unable to provide any further detail on its ongoing investigation.
A State Department spokesperson told CBS News last week that the U.S. has continued to press Israel for “a full, transparent, and rapid investigation.”
“We are eager to see the findings as soon as possible, including any appropriate accountability measures that will be taken,” the spokesperson added.
Asked whether the U.S. government intended to launch its own criminal investigation into Eygi’s killing, the White House referred CBS News back to President Biden’s statement from September, in which he said Israel had “acknowledged its responsibility for Aysenur’s death,” and that the U.S. had “full access to Israel’s preliminary investigation, and expects continued access as the investigation continues, so that we can have confidence in the result.”
But Eygi’s father, Mehmet Suat Eygi, said it seemed to have become the norm for the U.S. government to downplay the killing of Americans by Israeli forces. He said his daughter’s death reminded him of the deaths of other U.S. nationals in the Palestinian territories, particularly Rachel Corrie and Shireen Abu Akleh.
OZAN KOSE/AFP/Getty
“It’s beyond disappointment,” the bereaved father told CBS News. “The reaction of the U.S. government only asserts that Israel could kill anyone and there would be no consequences.”
He emigrated to the Seattle area in 1999, when his daughter was 10 months old, and was naturalized in 2005. Aysenur Eygi grew up in the Pacific Northwest and graduated from the University of Washington in the spring of 2024. She had planned to start a PhD program after taking a gap year off.
“The safety of American citizens should not be tied to their ideological support to Israel,” Eygi’s father told CBS News.
Samah Park Imtiaz was a close friend of Eygi. Sobbing quietly, she recalled to CBS News their last phone call, when Eygi told her how much she missed her cat.
“I am still in a dream state when I think about what happened,” Imtiaz said. “[Biden] said whoever hurt Americans would face consequences. We are Americans and we deserve answers.”
In September, 103 members of the U.S. Congress signed a letter to Mr. Biden urging the administration to launch an independent investigation into Eygi’s killing.
“To walk away without asking further questions gives Israeli forces unacceptable license to act with impunity,” the lawmakers said.
Brad Parker, a member of the legal team supporting Eygi’s family, called the Biden administration’s response thus far “underwhelming,” and said it was “concerning” that there had not been a “strong sign to pursue justice for Aysenur.”
“I think it’s the policy at this point, which can be characterized as providing impunity to Israeli forces, even in the killing of American citizens,” he told CBS News. “The focus has been on having the Israeli military adjust [its] rules of engagement, rather than justice and accountability for specific killings of American citizens.”
Eygi’s husband, Ali, said Israel’s close alliance with the U.S. should not make it immune to consequences.
“Israel has a history of not being forthcoming with any kind of investigation and, when they are, it is largely inadequate what they come up with,” he said.
His sister-in-law said the Biden administration had yet to address the family’s pain, “aside from condolences.”
“If the U.S. government does not respond to cases like hers, which historically they have not, Israel has the green light to continue acting with impunity and killing other citizens,” Bennett asserted.
